Sting
by JMK758
Summary: I am wrapping up several story points from my Seasons 2, 3 & 4 here to pave the way for new ones. Jimmy and Michelle return home to a shock, but this is just the first of many. For the NCIS team, it hits too close to home, but danger to life is not as deadly as
1. Welcome Home

This is my 34th NCIS Mystery, the Fourth story of my Fourth Season. 'NCIS' is owned by Belisarius Productions while Dr. Maura Isles hails from 'Rizzoli and Isles', which is owned and produced by Hurdler Productions and by Ostar Productions. As a not too great coincidence, she is portrayed by Sasha Alexander, the former Kate Todd.  
This story takes place in the second week of July, four days after the conclusion of 'In the Hearts of Men'.  
Ducky is still on vacation in Scotland with Dr. Jordan Hampton, and Jimmy and Michelle Palmer are midway through a month long therapeutic vacation in Virginia so Dr. Maura Isles, ME for Boston, together with Apprentice ME Samantha Sky, have been 'womanning' Autopsy.  
I own only Samantha Sky, Siobhan O'Mallory McGee, Jeffrey Carpenter and other Original Characters.  
You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
This story is rated T or NC-is 17.

Sting  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Welcome Home

It's 11:46 on Monday morning when Michelle Palmer, muscles aching from too little sleep and too many hours in Jimmy's car, pushes open the fourth floor apartment door. It gives way with the loud bang of too tightly wedged wood breaking the hot seal and she steps aside, holding the hot door open for Jimmy who lugs in their two suitcases. They'd traveled very light to the Saint Francis Retreat House in West Virginia, so one case each for the month had been adequate for their needs, but in the sauna which passes for their apartment even this task is a wet and breathless burden.

Jimmy puts the cases down on the living room floor and turns as she locks the door. He draws her into a loving hug. "Welcome home," he says and kisses her, but her pleasure remains muted and she pushes out of his embrace. She doesn't want to, but can't bear the furnaces their bodies imitate. They're home, and that's something they can focus upon, even if there's little joy in the reason.

When Michelle backs away - they haven't exchanged a short kiss in over a year but this is one of the shortest - she sighs "So good to be home," looking about the sweltering living room. Too much of the July heat has been trapped in the sealed apartment, as evidenced by the difficulty in breaking the door seal, and she can virtually see the heat striations in the air.

"Yeah," he says. Sixteen days away had been nice, for the most part, but she can see in his eyes, in the way he moves, in a dozen different things a wife notices, that he's gladder to be home than he voices. Sometimes a month at a Retreat House isn't as good as Georgetown, as home on Orchard Lane. He crosses the room to the side windows - sometimes a corner apartment is a distinct advantage - and turns the air conditioner on high.

"I'll unpack," she says, glances at and then ignores the portable phone and the 37 flashing on its base, hefts her case and carries it past the couch to the short hallway. She feels a river of perspiration flow down her front and back, yet one more annoyance. The sun dress is light but naked is too dressed. 'I should've unplugged it' she thinks as she passes bathroom and closets to the bedroom door. She has to push this door too; the heat has expanded the wood even tighter than its usual overly painted seal and when she hits it hard with her hip it bangs open.

'What the _hell_?' screams in her mind as she's slammed back by a horrific stench almost physical in its force. When she broke that seal she got the full nauseating impact up her nose and painfully into her eyes.

Brown spatter covers the neat Queen bed, evidently driven with such force it'd marked the wall on her side of the room. The entire right wall is splashed with gore. There's a widely spread but quite disgusting collection of small meat detritus decaying on the large bed. A cloud of flies blasts fury through her boiling brain.

To her right at the head of the bed the right window is mostly closed and well secured upon the top of the air conditioner but the one by Jimmy's pillow is wide open. The brown spatter on the bed, ceiling and covering her wall all comes from his side. The still July air, aside from turning the room into an oven, does nothing for the sight of too familiar meaty pieces or the too damned familiar stink.

Her first thought that this is a sick practical joke or even more vindictive assault flashes away instantly as she squeezes the stink from her eyes and takes in the room as a whole. This is no joke, and _no one _they know is this sick or vindictive.

She pushes the door closed, just the bare tight tip hold it as she tries to keep the cloud of flies from spreading. Stepping around the foot of the bed, to his side, she feels she has a good idea what she'll find - it has the horrible feeling of the inevitable about it - while at the same time she has no idea exactly what to expect other than that it'll be very, very bad.

When she sees it, she feels the suitcase she'd forgotten about slip from her left hand and it clunks to the utterly ruined white carpet. She pulls in a deep breath and is instantly sorry for swallowing the cloying stink, but she only intends to keep the lungbusting air for an instant.

"_JIMMYYYYY_!"

x

Chelle's startling scream is so intense that Jimmy whirls at the kitchen table and runs through living room and short hall before it ends. He bursts through the doorway into the staggering stench and he slams to a stop on the white shag carpet. The force of the too familiar stink tries to batter him back out the door but he fights it, unwanted experience allows him to win over the invisible barrier.

'Chelle stands on the other side of the bed, her case dropped at her feet and the stench is one he's smelled several thousand times and had never expected nor wanted to smell it in his broiling bedroom.

He wipes the shower of perspiration from his eyes and looks again. He hadn't washed the image away. The bed is a mess for blood and a score of small meaty pieces in advanced stage of noxious decay, and the ceiling and wall to his right are spattered with long dried brown blood.

A hundred flies churn the air, and he reaches back to close the door.

She's staring at something out of his sight but what he can see is the wide open window by his side of the bed's head that he remembers closing and locking. Whatever sparked that screamed summons is on the floor beyond the queen bed by the open, formerly locked window. The headboard, light blue wall, bed, that whole right half of the room is spattered with dark brown dried stains he's - they both have - seen far too many times.

The long ago liquid spatter would be bad enough in itself but it's mingled with too many small bits of solid matter deposited over the wide bed and 'Chelle's side of the floor. This detritus too he has seen in too many varieties over the years and he's sure he could identify a considerable amount of it except that he doesn't want to. The flies that cloud the room only add their own annoying miasma.

When he steps further toward her around the foot of the bed the day that had started miserably goes straight down to hell.

x

The Caucasian man appears to be in his late teens, long and unkempt black hair well receded from his forehead. He's wearing jeans, mostly blue, and most of a once white tee shirt. Beside him and partially under the bed is an empty canvas bag which has soaked up some of his blood. He's bled out from the hole excavated in his right side, the edge of the wound touching the floor.

The pool of blood - he _would_ land so inconveniently after death that as the blood settled it drained from the gaping hole - so completely suffused the white shag carpet that it had even flowed under their bed. The deep wound, charred and blackened, is waist high and looks to Jimmy like a small grenade had detonated above the balding man's right hip.

The wound, on second look, is moving and this stirs aggravation in both of them.

"Chelle?" He can barely move his lips, can't look away from the corpse.

"Yeah?" She sounds breathy, stunned and he can't blame her.

Flashing back to the staggering flamboyance with which she and Abby had done up Agent McGee's desk and Mother McGee's office during their two week honeymoon in Ireland - those combined projects have become legendary - Jimmy can't get that scheme out of his thoughts and hears himself say, though he can't believe the toneless words that slip through his fugue: "We agreed: 'no welcome home surprises'."


	2. Outrage

Chapter Two  
Outrage

A Federal Agent and a Deputy Medical Examiner need little instruction on the documentation, preservation and reporting of a Crime Scene, though they'd never imagined they'd declare their bedroom to be such.

Jimmy has turned the air conditioner at the right window on full while Michelle escaped the room quickly, sealing in the cloud of flies before she set the kitchen machine together with the already working living room unit, as much to clear the spreading stink out of the apartment as to cool it down. In the 90 plus degree late afternoon, he doubts the one in their bedroom is up to the task, but of course they can't close the window on his side of the bed until the Scene is properly recorded and investigated.

She returns a few moments later as quickly through the door as she had left. After calls to Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Maura Isles which exclude the reason why they're back in Georgetown in the middle of July rather than at its end, they set to work on the Crime Scene - their bedroom - and the deceased, the evident thief who'd entered through the formerly locked fire escape window.

The answer to that point had been the easiest solution. It presents itself in a 6 by 4 inch rectangle removed from the upper pane of glass behind the lower pane's lock. There's a dirty sneaker print on his night table and the bronze lamp has been knocked to the carpet. The man had come up or down on the fire escape, had cut, removed, unlocked, lifted, entered - and died.

Michelle declared it justice.

x

She refuses to use her cell phone and run the risk of having to turn over her vacation photos - like Gibbs would allow her to email only the relevant photos - so she takes Jimmy's cell phone from his shorts pocket and uses it to thoroughly document the scene.

Jimmy's not a photographer of more than one subject, so he'll have plenty of free memory on his phone. The photos he keeps are in a password protected gallery to which she knows the key as well as he does, but on the whole there's plenty of available space.

Of course the team will bring the MCR truck and everything needed to investigate the scene, but when they get here they will _not_ find her seated on her living room couch twiddling her thumbs.

Bad enough she must swing at the flies, but they're so thick that she cannot attack without hitting several at a time.

"Jimmy, will you _please_ get the can from under the sink?"

"Okay."

When he's gone she holds her tongue, doesn't allow herself to give vent to the fact that he should have done this first.

He returns and sprays the air, and eventually it's the floor and bed rather than the air that are littered with black.

Of course, the damn window is still open until the 'official' photos are taken.

x

When she's done with the sixty eighth picture, everything from panoramic shots from each of the room's corners to the most extreme close ups of the cavity in the young man's side, she steps out of the way to allow Jimmy to start his work.

More flies have come in to replace their dead brethren so she snatches up the can from the top of her make-up table to begin her own murder spree.

She can do nothing yet about the colony that grows in the man's excavated hole.

xx

A touch of the dead man's hand tells Jimmy clearly enough what the liver probe will reveal, but he inserts this anyway, sets the other thermometer upon the bed.

"Don't put it there."

He glances back and up to her but, rather than argue, he clips the small unit to a belt loop of his shorts.

He fishes through his black bag, the one from the closet that contains everything he'd use at a Crime Scene he'd be summoned to deep in the night and takes out a graduated probe. He'll use this to measure the wound. He looks back to Michelle; she has her notebook open and ready.

"Rigor has come and gone, body's been here for quite a bit more than 36 hours, judging by the maggots and flies."

"_Please_."

He's no happier about that; while the flies are aggravating the maggots are sickening and the stink makes them fight their gag reflexes so it doesn't help already near exhausted patiences. 'Chelle always keeps the apartment very clean and the thought of sleeping in this room from now on is particularly unappealing. He checks and compares the liver probe with the thermometer at his belt. "This is no good. The conditioner's cooling the room down and he's been cooking in ambient that hasn't dipped below 85 all week. He's hotter than the room is now."

"Could've told you that," she says bitterly, her voice tight.

"Well, I'm sorry. We work to a system."

"Well, it's a stupid system. Core temperature in a week old corpse."

Jimmy starts to answer, changes his mind and refixes on procedure, something Doctor Mallard will do more than expect, despite the crime scene being beside his bed. "Lividity fixed and complete." He examines the dry splotch of pooled blood that flowed under the bed even along the thick shag rug. '_Thank you_ for landing so the wound drained into our carpet.' "Exsanguination took care of about... three liters is my estimate. It soaked into the fibers, back–"

"_Jimmy_."

He can virtually hear her teeth grinding. He so much wants not to hear his own start. "I'm sorry, honey. The blood has fully separated into plasma, serum, then dried completely." He looks at the spatter surrounding him. "Blood spatter–"

"The blood is high velocity spatter on ceiling, walls, headboard, bedcover and will never come out!" she declares, hugely affronted. "Even if we wash and paint, the blood will still be there."

He looks back, surprised at the depth of her outrage. Sometimes knowledge of Crime Scene Investigation is a disadvantage. No amount of scrubbing will get rid of every particle of blood and various things like Luminal and their like will reveal blood even through some types of paint. He feels as invaded as he's sure she does, and more than once he's thought this thief got exactly what he deserved but "Yes, we can do something about it. Doctor Mallard and Agent DiNozzo both tell m–"

"I won't be here to see it! We're _moving_!"

He tries to look past the anger in her brown eyes. As the climax to the past 24 hours... "Can we discuss this later?"

"Yeahsurefinewhatever." The bell beside the front door rings, the signal sent from three stories down. "I'll get it," is as long a sigh.


	3. Somebody Call For Some Feds?

Chapter Three  
Somebody Call For Some Feds?

Michelle Palmer wipes the perspiration from her face, stands for several seconds in the cold jet of the air conditioner and gives several fast tugs of her sun dress to circulate the cooling air along her bare body and pull the material from her flesh. It's as though she were thrown into a boiling vat, the dress plastered to her body.

Too soon she has to stop and cross the living room when she hears sounds upon the landing, but by then the too damp dress is chilled. "Should've freakin' changed." She considers calling through the door for the visitors to wait, but all her clothes are in her dressers or closet and she doesn't want to return to that room - at all. If she's showing anything, they can be gentlemen and look away or damn them; she no longer cares which.

Fortunately or un, that chill lasts only seconds before the heat wraps her in its smothering grip.

Again she must yank open, with aggravating difficulty, the front door; the heat expansion has made the wood stick in the frame once again. When it bangs open she's confronted by a wall of Leroy Jethro Gibbs flanked by Ziva David and Tony DiNozzo with Tim McGee partially visible beyond.

It's far too hot for the usual Crime Scene jackets and identification is hardly needed here, and even their white lettered black caps which would have distinguished them in the street on their approach to the four story apartment house have been dispensed with. She's grateful they've done this. She doesn't know who Jimmy has told that they work for NCIS, but after hearing what had happened to Special Agent Janet Levy last week she doesn't ever want anyone to know what she does, and this goes doubly for their new apartment, wherever that might be.

"Welcome back, Probette," DiNozzo is the first to speak and she's more sure than ever that she's sorry to be back. "Somebody call for some Feds?"

"Yeah," she sighs out the heat, "but since you're all I could get, you might as well come in." She shuts the door after them, has to shove it this time to form the unwanted seal and the latch clicks into place. She doesn't bother to lock it. The air conditioner to her right will take hours to make a difference in the wood.

Tim looks at her in open surprise and she knows why. From anyone else that might have been banter, but as nice as she usually tries to present herself, the line was downright nasty.

She can't help it. In less than ten seconds she's already sick of Anthony DiNozzo and isn't interested in who knows it. Keeping her tongue was the way of the old Michelle, the pre- and peri-Virginia Retreat Michelle.

The Michelle she intends to be from now on is a First Class Bitch, and they'd better get used to her.

x

"Where?" Gibbs asks.

She glances to the hallway to her left, their right. "Bedroom." She lets Special Agent Gibbs lead Tim and Ziva across the room, no point in trying to play hostess and lead the tall man, but she does precede DiNozzo. She stops at the bedroom entrance while the trio has gone around the foot of the queen bed with Jimmy, but she has trouble entering the violated room. She feel she's been violated worse, twice now for having her friends see the scene.

Though over a hundred corpses litter bed, floor and all else, where she and DiNozzo stop in the doorway they can see the devastation in the fortunately now flyless room all too well.

The burglar had entered through the window at Jimmy's side of the headboard, the side with the fire escape, and stepped upon the night table, judging by the dirty sneaker print upon its surface and the bronze three small bulb lamp that lies upon the carpet. The window on her side has the laboring air conditioner screwed into the wooden frame. As soon as possible, a.k.a. once photos are taken with the big Crime Scene camera, she'll close that other window and spread tape across the six by four hole. Then whatever flies that want to break in can get stuck and starve to death.

From the other side of the bed brown dried blood had spattered ceiling, bed and light blue wall on her side with high velocity spatter, but the bedspread is covered with the brown blood and gobs of decaying meat half cooked in the sweltering mid-July abuse, as well as the myriad fly corpses which litter the carpet, dressers et al. The bed spread will go to Abby more likely than the trash, she only wants to be rid of it.

"Boy, Probette," DiNozzo says from behind her, "you still go in for spectacular decorating."

x

Gibbs looks up from the corpse upon the once white shag carpet, sees Michelle approach to come around the bed beside Jimmy, but he sees Tony stopped in the doorway, his wide eyes and open mouth a mask of astonished disbelief.

"_Hey_. You with us?"

It takes the man too many seconds to force that expression from his face. "Right here, boss."

"We have a full set of pictures," Michelle says to Gibbs as she pulls from her sun dress pocket Jimmy's cell phone and hands it over to him.

The blood falls from Jimmy's face. "I - I - I - that - that is - I –."

"Spit it out, Palmer," Gibbs orders, having little sympathy or patience this afternoon.

"Well, that is - those pictures aren't the..."

Gibbs tosses the unit to McGee. "Don't worry, we'll only take the ones from here." Jimmy looks so relieved he can't resist assuring him that "We'll delete the others."

Palmer's panic spikes, but it feels too much like shooting trout in a barrel with a bazooka.

x

The living room door bangs open. "Bing _bong,_" a familiar sing-song voice calls. "Avon calling."

No one is surprised by the outlandish greeting, least of all the Palmers who have hosted Apprentice Medical Examiner Sammy Sky on numerous occasions.

"In the Liberator's Rec Room," Jimmy calls back and a second later the petite blonde leads Dr. Maura Isles of Boston, Ducky's stand-in for the past month, into the room. Despite the large dimensions of the bedroom, with a good quarter of the fifteen square foot room being the focal Crime Scene, eight people plus the corpse by the uncurtained window now taxes the room's limits.

"Hi, everyone!" Sammy exclaims while she gives Jimmy a 'that-joke-was-worse-than-mine' look. She doubts anyone else in the room gets the Blake's Seven reference. Both she and Isles, pulled out of Autopsy, still wear their short sleeved blue scrubs, not fashion statements by any means but more comfortable in the 90 plus degree room than their blue jump suits could be.

Sammy had told them before they'd left that she was designing midriff Field Coveralls for each of them but that Maura had nixed the idea on Ducky's behalf.

"Doc," Gibbs says succinctly to the honey-blonde woman who, though she's spent a month with them, is still too chillingly similar to their late partner Kate Todd for him to feel comfortable around her. He points to the body laid out along the wall.

"Sammy," 'Kate' says to her assistant who she sees is about to gravitate to the returned couple, but since she steps into the space beside the bed there's little Sky can to do to help short of squeezing through or crawling upon the blood spattered mattress.

"I took most of the measurements already, Doctor," Jimmy announces. "Judging by decay, maggot infestation and so forth–"

Michelle whispers something in Chinese that no one asks for a translation of.

Gibbs looks to her but doesn't call her on the interruption. Considering the pooled and spattered blood and assorted detritus, much of this room is a loss. Fine 'welcome home' surprise, though why are they home today?

"I'd say about five to six days," Jimmy finishes.

x

"Well, the wound," Isles says for the record into a mini tape recorder retrieved from her scrubs pocket and set on a clean spot on the carpet and a measuring tape from the other, knowing her main assistant here has already recorded everything, "is a circular one 10 inches in diameter with 8.6 at its least wide by 9.2 inches deep above the pelvic bone which is visible and might be fractured. I'll be able to determine more when I get him on the table. I concur with Dr. Palmer's estimated TOD, Cause... well, the cause is a hole in the right hip, level with the belt-"

"His cell phone blew up?" DiNozzo asks.

Maura looks back over her shoulder. "I'm not ready to determine that. All I will say is the location of the wound. If I find anything in the wound I will be better able to establish additional facts, but I definitely do not attribute a cell phone as the Cause of Death."

"Well, what can you tell me?"

"The Manner of Death is more forthright at this point but before I sign off on it there will be a full post-mortem. That a cell phone was a contributing factor I shall leave to Abby Sciuto to prove or disprove if I find cell phone residue in the wound." She sounds dubious that she will accomplish that.

"You sound like you don't think it's a cell phone," Gibbs presses.

"I don't have any conclusions."

Gibbs, well used to the woman's determination never to commit herself to anything that hasn't been probed, examined, analyzed, x-rayed and so forth, is still willing to trust his own eyes. Whatever excavated that wound also split a leather belt, and if some of that leather is a cell phone holder he won't be very surprised.

He's heard it's possible for a cell phone to explode, though he's never seen the result before. He has a hard time, however, in believing that one can explode with this much force.

He expects that an inspection of the bed and opposite side of the room will reveal more than a meat puzzle.

x

"Boss," McGee ventures, "I don't think his cell phone blew up either."

"What _do _you think, McGee, that he lit an M-80 in his pocket?" He'd be happier with that explanation.

"No, but-"

"Agent McGee is correct," Maura declares as she looks back over her shoulder up to Gibbs. "In 97% of cases of so-called explosions of cell phones, it's the battery that ignites, accompanied by burning, melting of the casing and so forth."

"That's right, boss. The phones don't explode with the power of a bomb, the batteries ignite and they mostly melt. Burns are the most common injuries, though the explosions do cause wounds like this but not so severe."

"Exploding is a misnomer–"

"DiNozzo." He's heard enough. These two eggheads will scramble his.

x

"Fingerprints from the window. On it, boss." He sees he'll have to climb past Sky and over Isles to reach the open portal. "Will be on it, boss."

Gibbs isn't satisfied with that, though for the moment he grants he must be. "McGee, when you get in there-"

"They can have the space now," Isles says as she rises. "I've seen what I need to." She repockets the recorder and tape measure into her scrubs top.

He steps in the block her exit. "Well?"

"He's dead."

"Thank you." He turns to McGee to complete his thought. "Use your finger thingy. Find out who he is."

Though they usually use the Portable IAFIS Scanner to identify Servicemen, their most frequent subjects, the device accesses the wide range of prospects through wireless links. Still, the thought that this man could be / had been in the Armed Forces leads DiNozzo to ask "You don't think another Serviceman targeting an NCIS Agent, do you? That'd be too much of a coinkydink to happen twice in the same month."

"This point," Michelle says, "I'd believe anything."

x

Gibbs turns to the woman who stands beyond the foot of the bed beside her tall husband, not quite believing she'd said that. "He look like a Marine to you, Palmer?"

The man, such as is left of him, is in his apparent late teens, has not had a haircut in at least 7 months though his hairline has receded a good third of the way up his skull, nor has he shaved in most of the past month. His arms are scrawny and though one arm is under the body and the outer side of the other arm reveals nothing, no one plans to be surprised if they find track marks up and down each set of near surface veins. The clothing looks like something the Salvation Army would throw away rather than try to resell.

x

"From the looks of him," Jimmy says, probably trying to divert the attention of his wife's boss from her, "he's pretty pathetic. I feel sorry for hi–"

No one's prepared when Michelle whirls on Jimmy, shoves him before her in a six foot drive across the room. He crashes into the wall beside the television so hard the painting beside his head is dislodged and she leans her hands into his chest, pins him in place. Though seven inches shorter than he, she makes that up with towering fury.

"Will you STOP being so damned _NICE_? That bastard broke in, tried to _rob _us. He _destroyed_ our bedroom! I can never use this room again! Damn it, he's ruined _everything_! When will you ever get MAD?"

"'Chelle," he's probably stunned in several senses from the assault and impact, but he rallies and gently takes her shoulders in his hands, "be re–"

She breaks from him, whirls away to the crowded room, fists and eyes clenched, body tight, her shrill scream lasts until she expends every atom of air. Even when drained she holds the silent shriek. The only sound is the whirring air conditioner which labors to cool the room against the competition of the open window beside it.

x

It's five more seconds before she gulps in air, opens her eyes and prepares for another scream, but it's cut off by Ziva David standing inches before her.

"Let us go into the living room." The words are phrased as a suggestion but there's nothing of option in her manner.

Michelle looks back at her still shaken husband, then up to Ziva.

"_Fine_."


	4. Backflash

Chapter Four  
Backflash

Ziva follows the steaming woman through the hall and into the living room, but though the smaller agent stops in its center, directly in line with the cool stream of this room's AC, she has relaxed none of her muscles. She resembles a statue made of C4 that awaits only the detonator.

Ziva waits fifteen measured seconds, decides her hostess does not intend to say anything. "Michelle?" No answer. "Michelle?" Still no response, so she tries more firmly. "Agent Palmer?"

Michelle turns sharply. "_What_?"

"You are on vacation for a month and yet returned within sixteen days."

"Good thing we did," she says, glares past the taller woman's body toward the hallway.

"It does not seem so. What happened in Virginia?"

"What makes you think something happened, and why the hell do you care?"

"To the second, I am your partner. To the first, though you have often struggled with your temper, you left two weeks ago loving your husband and now you have tried to slam him through a wall."

x

She turns away toward the kitchen. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Did he hurt you?" Michelle looks back over her shoulder, surprise bright on her face. "I shall kick his ass," she offers. She remembers making the same offer to Tim when he had been held captive in a women's prison.

This does make Michelle turn. "No."

"You are sure?"

"I'm perfectly capable of kicking Jimmy's ass - if he deserves it. And he doesn't."

"That is obvious. But what about...?" Not certain how to articulate something that's supposed to be impossible in a rational world but which she's witnessed from her partner, she extends her hands toward the woman in dramatic 'poof' gesture.

She's astonished when Michelle backs away, her face goes white and she gasps, her breath fragments as she whispers "Oh my Goddess!" She covers her pale face, terror floods her gasps. "_Oh my Goddess_!"

Ziva's so surprised she checks her outthrust hands but knows that what seems to be is impossible - except that around this woman the word 'impossible' takes on very questionable and too often erratic meanings. She resists grabbing her frantic partner, not certain what could happen and does not want any of it. "_WHAT_?"

When Michelle pulls her hands down, her brown eyes look like she's seen Satan and every demon of the damned. "I just remembered!"

"What?"

It takes her several moments to force the emotion down, force herself to whisper: "Jimmy! A few months ago we had a fight and I _killed_ him."

x

"Excuse me?" Does she mean that literally? _Had_ she killed-?

"It was when those _sìshènzgì_ posted those fake pictures of us on the Internet and no one seemed able to stop them because the law protects them and their 'free speech', not us. So I decided to stop them myself."

ooo

"'Chelle," Jimmy says carefully as he watches her open the doors of the small rolling cabinet she uses as her altar, pull out the large box and set it on the bed, "what are you doing?" He knows what she's doing; he hopes to get her to think about it.

"You can't be any part of this, honey." She flaps open and spreads on the altar / cabinet top a velvet cloth inscribed with a large silver five pointed star within a circle. The emblem takes up the whole of the altar's surface.

This angry determination is a side of her he's never seen and it frightens him. Again he tries to get her to see what she's doing. "Part of what?"

She's not hearing him. She takes from the box her glass-enclosed colored candles and bangs each of them upon the altar, something he's never seen her do to her precious tools, and returns to the box. "I'm going to bind that bastard."

"What bastard?"

"The bastard that's doing this to us!"

"But you don't even know who he is."

"I don't have to know." She slams a bowl she normally treats with great reverence onto the altar. "His evil intent will bind him."

"'Chelle, what are you going to bind?" he asks even more cautiously. He's occasionally seen her make her preparations for a Wiccan ceremony, though he's never participated - but he's never seen her do it while she's angry.

"I was considering his sex life. Erectile dysfunction beyond Viagra's ability to help sounds about right."

"'Chelle..."

x

She carries the incense and brassier from the box and sets it within the silver star. It's the first thing she hasn't banged, but the incense would fly out in a cloud so it's no sign of improvement. "Go away, honey, this doesn't concern you."

It sounds very much like it concerns him. "Didn't you tell me this is illegal? Something about the Power of Three?"

She sets down her wand, but this finally grasps her attention and she looks up at him. "Huh?"

"Something about whatever you do comes back on you three times?"

"That's the 'Rule of Three' and I'll risk it."

"I really don't think you should."

"Jimmy, right now I really don't care what you think!" She sees the effect of this slap. "I mean I care, I love you, I adore you but this is none of your business. Now I have to concentrate so I really need you to leave."

He steps to the altar and picks up her wand.

x

"Put that back!" she snaps, surprised and then outraged that he'd even touch it, let alone remove it.

"No. Not until you come to your senses."

She slaps her hand down upon the altar, outrage consumed in incendiary fury. "We have a deal, remember? I leave your medical stuff alone and you leave my magical equipment alone." She reaches for the wooden wand; he holds it high over his head. Between his being nearly a foot taller and with his longer arms she doesn't have a chance, but this only makes her angrier. It's intolerable, first those bastards violate her and now-

"I'm not playing with you, Jimmy," she grates between clenched teeth, blazing eyes searing his. "You do not touch my things. No one is to touch a Witch's equipment. Now give it back."

"No."

x

She tries for a reasonable tone, but looking up at him and her wand held high overhead, it lasts half a second. "I am really getting pissed with you, _James._ Give me my wand and get out of here."

He backs out of her reach. "Or what? What will you do?"

She thrusts out her open hand. "I said 'GIVE IT BACK'!"

He's blasted away from her, drops the wand as he crashes into the wall, a look of horrified astonishment on his face. She's as surprised; she hadn't directed any power - intentionally.

He clutches his chest, astonishment washed away by agony as she hurries to him. He convulses, intense pain contorting his face. He's so much larger than she is that she can't keep him upright as he falls past her, crashes to the floor with a guttural scream.

"Jimmy!"

He convulses on the floor, clutching his chest, his agonized cries terrifyingly loud. She falls to her knees, terrified, tries to help but not knowing what's wrong she doesn't know how. "Jimmy, I'm _sorry_! I–"

He screams in horrendous torment.

"OH GODDESS, NO!" she cries. "I DIDN'T MEAN IT! GODDESS, NO! HELP HIM! PLEASE HELP HIM! I'M SORRY!"

She puts her hands upon his chest; Healing has always been her specialty but she doesn't know what's wrong and is too terrified to think. She can't concentrate to direct the power, can't even see through tears of panic and Jimmy gives one long, soul-searing scream and collapses, utterly still, eyes wide, his face slack, a mask of death.

"_NOOOOOO_!" Michelle shrieks, gathers his limp body into her arms. He's not breathing, motionless as death. Tears streaming down her face, she snatches at the cell phone at her belt.

"And this is how you feel when you didn't intend to hurt someone," Jimmy says, raising his head and smiling at her.

ooo

"He'd faked everything, pretended to die to show me how I'd feel had I gone ahead with it. He looked dead and I was sure I'd killed him I _freaked_."

"I can well understand that," she says, unable to understand any of it.

Something about that scene, however, and she still thinks Jimmy was mean and overdid the point, starts to severely scare her.

She has heard a lifetime of stories, everything from the Golem of her own people's legends to Tony's taste in horrible flecks, but until this moment she had never seriously considered the possibility, so she asks her partner a question she would never, before today, have asked anyone. "Michelle? _Can_ you kill someone with Witchcraft?"

It does not help that the smaller woman does not immediately deny it, but spends many seconds in serious consideration before admitting "I really don't know."

"Do all of us a favor. Do not ever try to find out."

xx

In the bedroom Tim presses the sensor pad of his Portable AFIS Scanner to the still thumb of the corpse. Seconds later the display lights to the image of the young man. It's from an MPDC record and the subject is little improved.

"Alan Stephens, give or take seven known aliases," he reports. "Thirty three years old, but going back nineteen years we start with Petty Larceny, Trespassing and Shoplifting graduated to Burglary, Home Invasion, Menacing, Felony Assault, ADW, Grand Theft, Grand Theft Auto... I think I'll stop halfway through."

"Long enough," Gibbs agrees.

"How long did he spend in jail?" Sammy wants to know. This requires a different unit and more detailed research, but the yield is worth it.

"He's been arrested _sixty six_ times, a quick adding up of his time behind bars puts him in for about eleven years, a lot of it in Holding while Awaiting Trial rather than in serving Sentences. A lot of his sentences were Juvenile, it's only in the past fifteen years he's done any unsealed, serious time."

Despite his history, no one feels much interest in his incarcerations. The greatest consternation comes from his present condition.

x

"McGee." He'll pick on the man because he stands over the body and there's not enough room for the two of them. "Estimate the height of that wound. If he was shot, what was the most likely sniper position?"

If he was sniped through the window, and he'd been facing into the room, he'd have to have been turned around after he was hit, but answers even to that will follow more detailed examination.

He doesn't have to estimate by much, but before he looks out the uncurtained lower half of the window he sees Jimmy shake his head. When he looks out, he understands the unspoken message. A few changes in elevation and angle only confirm it. "Boss, there's a problem."

'Isn't there always? "What problem, McGee?"

"Well, we're on the fourth floor, everything across the courtyard, which runs for six houses each way, are three stories. As you can see, the fire escape stairs from the fifth floor cut right across this window to block most of it. Shoot from the courtyard, you're firing through the walkway slats, which run parallel to the building, so he'd have an angled shot through spaces an inch wide.

"You'd make the shot, maybe another very good sniper might, but I really have to doubt it since the available set-up time would be a few seconds. Head shot, maybe, if Stephens were right by the window. Fire from a window or a roof, you have the stairs in the way, with their own inch wide / inch space slats and a lot more metal for supports. Like I say, you or someone as good might make it, if they had long enough to set up the shot before he got in and away from the window. Anyone else, no chance."

Gibbs feels McGee is buttering him, that is one hell of an undesirable shot, but "What about the next block?"

He thinks that would allow a better angle, unhindered by the walkway and the steps would be more horizontal and better spaced from that perspective - but there would be no time to prepare as the guy was seen to cut through the window and enter. It would literally be 'point and shoot'.

He won't do a 'point and shoot' sniper shot unless someone's life were in danger and he was certain he'd hit his target in the time allowed.

He hasn't done one yet.

"Sorry, Agent Gibbs," Jimmy says. "That block is all private homes, two story with slanted roofs and trees on both sides of the street. That's why 'Chelle and I don't even bother with lower curtains. No one can see."

x

"Is it _possible_ this could be from his cell phone?" If this matter can be put to rest, he wants it so.

"I doubt it," Maura says.

"I've known several cases of cell phones 'exploding'," McGee says, "but in almost all the cases it was the battery that was the culprit. I read about some Galaxy and other units that have exploded spontaneously, the yield has never been reported to be so high as this."

"Only in 24% of such cases were they not related to use while recharging or some other misuse," Isles counters. "In most cases of improper use excessive heat was involved, and there were multiple cases of electrocution."

"People won't stay off the things," Gibbs observes, "even while they're charging." If he had his druthers, he'd ruther not have one at all despite their usefulness and NCIS regulations.

But if his two experts - and he's still not sure where Isles' area of expertise lies - each say 'no', that settles it for him.

x

"You know," DiNozzo observes, "I like the scenario where they're together and the accomplice betrays him with the bomb right up to the point where someone asks my why the burglary didn't go down anyway."

Gibbs looks to Palmer. "You're sure nothing's missing?"

"We each checked thoroughly. Nothing."

"Perp number two took off after doing the deed?"

"Then why do it here?" Gibbs asks. This is a common technique; present and shoot holes in theories until they find one that's reasonably bulletproof.

"So," DiNozzo asks generally, "what do we do with the body?"

Gibbs knows what he asks: is it MPDC's corpse or NCIS'?

xx

Michelle still talks to Ziva but she manages to keep the verbal fencing to inconsequentials when she sees Sammy Sky in the hall arch.

"Hey, girlfriend."

"What's happening in there?"

"They're talking about Gold Medal Olympic Sniping through your window and the fire escape and decided it's impossible." She looks to Ziva. "Gibbsie wants you back inside."

"Gibbsie?" Ziva's tone is heavy disapproval mingled with disbelief but Sammy only grins and the Mossad Officer evidently gives up, much to Michelle's relief. But the two women simply trade places, Ziva heads to the short hall while Sammy approaches.

With her pixie style pale blonde hair and blue scrubs she reminds Michelle of her blue Elemental candle. Some of her candles follow common tradition but many do not. Blue, at least this shade of it, she uses for joy, contentment and especially exuberance. She'll never tell her about this convergence; Sky is enough like Tinkerbell, or any fairy, about to go Nova from sheer joie de vivre without adding anything to it.

She really is glad to see the blonde imp, however. They usually see eye to eye about many things and this has nothing to do with being three inches taller and therefore not being the shortest person in the room, an 'honor' she'd gladly ceded to Sammy but "I really don't need hand hol-"

What she gets is a very enthusiastic hug that lasts just long enough. "That I did need," she admits as her friend lets go.

She really does enjoy the time they spend together, either at NCIS or socially with Abby, because you simply cannot be in even the same vicinity with Sky and not be happy. The woman must be a secret witch, or rather an Elemental herself, because she has a happiness glow Michelle can't find yet always winds up under the spell of.

She's occasionally wondered if it had anything to do with her father having named her after the witch in a 60's comedy series, but she abandons that notion as being silly.

Or is it?

x

"So, what's the verdict?"

"They're debating what to do with the body. Tossup between giving the case to Lt. Carpenter of Metro Homicide - the less I see of that guy the happier I'll be - or keeping it because he broke into this apartment."

Sammy any happier than normal is a terrifying thought. "Who's winning?"

"Who always wins when Gibbsie is in the room?"

She giggles but pulls herself to sobriety again. "As to that, you can live a long and very happy life" what else is she going to do? "by never saying that again."

"I know, but it's so much fun."

xx

When Michelle returns with Sammy, Jimmy comes to her; but though he hugs her she doesn't feel it. It's like it's happening to but distant from her body. It's empty. She's empty.

But at least he can hug her without it feeling like being grabbed by a blast furnace. The window's shut now and the readout on the struggling air conditioner reads 77, not great but no longer sadistic.

It appears as though the decision about the body has been made. Big surprise.

Isles, with DiNozzo's help, works the corpse into a black body bag and she arrived in time to hear Gibbs tell McGee to go down to the ME truck and fetch the gurney.

"Boss, there's no elevator and it's three flights down." 'In 93 degree heat' he doesn't say but can't forget.

"So?"

He shrugs. "Right."

"I'll help," Jimmy says. "It's my job anyway."

Michelle had taken a step toward her dresser, ready to collect handcuffs and the Sig she has in a locked strongbox in the top drawer. Good thing that niào yè liú - shǐ tǒng hadn't gotten this far.

"No, it isn't," Gibbs counters, which halts both Palmers in their tracks.

"What do you mean?" Jimmy, the one the denial had been addressed to, asks.

"You can't work this case. You two are on vacation and–"

"We're back."

x

The room goes silent. No one in it has ever cut Gibbs off in contradiction.

"You're in DC," he says in what the other agents consider impressive forbearance, "you're not back. You're both still on vacation."

"No, we're not!" Michelle declares, upping the newly set NCIS record as she risks life and limb.

If DiNozzo, McGee and David could find someplace to duck and hide, they would. Isles and Sky, less likely to suffer from the fallout, watch intently.

x

When Gibbs does answer the woman, it's with a level voice that even Sky has learned to fear. It's the quiet that precedes the explosion. "You're both still on vacation until the 30th. You can't work this case, it's too close to home and he's not going back to Autopsy either. Spend the next two weeks together. Go to museums, see some plays, go to the beach, find something you both like to do but you're on vacation. McGee."

"Uh, yes boss?" He really doesn't want to be called into range.

"Find them somewhere to live."


	5. Cut My Life In Half

Chapter Five  
Cut My Life In Half

All that the Palmers had been allowed to do after Gibbs' declaration separated them from this case, and from their apartment, was to exchange the worn clothing in their suitcases for fresh. Jimmy collected his laptop and wires and while they waited on McGee's call they saw that the bedroom window had been taped over the hole. They'd surrendered their keys and received assurances the glass would be replaced before their return, but none as to when that would be.

Now they ride with Tim McGee in their car, the latter charged with assuring they'd be suitably accommodated in a Safe House. Unfortunately for the couple who start out in Georgetown, the only available location is in Kenilworth, each as far from the other as possible while still being in DC. At least, Tim considers, there's a huge park on the District's eastern corner.

"I'm sorry about this," he says from the rear seat.

"What part of it?" his partner asks.

"Well, uh, all of it."

She sighs, drops her head into her hand. When she comes up a few seconds later her tone is far more conciliatory. "I'm sorry, Tim, I shouldn't be taking this out on you. You've been great from the beginning, listening, arranging that trip..."

"It was Shav who arranged it, all four weeks."

He's written more than once in his novels and stories about 'deafening silence' or 'drowning in the quiet', but it's still uncomfortable. After a half minute it's clear to him that neither of them will break this one. "How was Virginia?"

"All right," Jimmy says.

"Okay," Michelle agrees.

He decides to content himself with the quiet.

xxx

Sixteen hundred is nominal quitting time for NCIS' Alpha Shift but as the Team has learned long ago there are different kinds of time. There's objective time, astrological time, nautical time, Zulu time and Gibbs time, and the last is characterized by frequent double time rushes and less frequent but emotionally charged halts, depending upon its relation to objective time. Therefore neither DiNozzo nor David glance at the wall mounted clock as the red hand sweeps past the 12. Instead they stand on either side of their boss before the plasma screen as DiNozzo uses the remote to pull in the feed from his computer.

The enlarged photo displayed is the most recent of an extensive selection of Booking photos on one Alan Stephens, this one taken less than a week ago, hair receded up top yet an unkempt mop brushes his shoulders. The document on the right contains a long list of Charges, the latest one corresponds to the date on the placard he holds, then being Grand Larceny and Assault with a Deadly Weapon.

"I'm guessing," DiNozzo says, "that someone's now one up on him in the ADW category."

"Our job's to find out who," Gibbs reminds him.

"And let us not neglect how and why."

"Hopefully Isles and Abby can give us the 'how', Zee-vah. You check with Abby. DiNozzo, known associates."

He turns in time to see McGee enter the bullpen. "The Palmers are settled in."

"Take the bus back, McGee?" he asks with a glance at his watch.

"Had to." He had left his car here. But he stops at the expressions on his partners' faces. Tony and Ziva stare at him and neither looks happy, Gibbs looks annoyed. "Anything wrong?"

"Oh," Tony says, "while you were playing Real Estate Agent instead of Federal Agent, you missed a call."

"She wanted to check on your progress," Ziva says, but when he looks back to her her face is expressionless.

"Who wanted?"

"Ms. Lyndi Crawshaw."

"Your Publisher," Tony elaborates and enjoys seeing the distress on his face.

"It seems 'Cearbhall's Quest' is doing so well," Ziva lays it on thick, "she wants an update on your fourth book."

"You know the series, the 'Continuing Adventures of L. J. Tibbs'."

Gibbs looks as though he's about to strike."Didn't learn a lesson from the last two books?"

"Ahhh." To say 'yes' or 'no' would seriously damage his credibility and his hairstyle.

x

"What's this one about?" Tony asks.

"About two hundred fifty pages of trouble," is Ziva's opinion.

"Well, at least what's it called?"

Tim looks to Gibbs, but it's clear he can hope for no help from that direction. "Err, 'The Other Locked Room'."

"Intriguing," Tony grants with still broad skepticism. He'd read an early draft of 'Rock Hollow' and hadn't been impressed. Neither had Ziva. "So, do we see more sleuthing by Mossad Officer Lisa?"

"And does Special Agent Tommy still have a _thing_ for the ladies?" she bites back.

"I thought you did learn after the last two times," Gibbs drives, more disappointed than annoyed.

"I'm sorry. My books have been selling so well there's a big demand."

"For Officer Lisa," Tony relishes.

"I shall not injure you severely this time," Ziva says, "but I caution you to beware of Pimmy Jalmer."

"The Polynesian necrophile."

"All right, Tony, I told you that was a dream."

"So what are you dreaming about this time?"

x

"Well, Tony, in this one a woman opens her apartment door and is shot, but the bullet goes through the back wall of the apartment and kills someone in the next, hence the 'other locked room'."

"Sounds familiar," he says broadly. "In fact, it sounds _exactly_ like the Langley / Huston case." He pronounces the latter one 'Hewston'.

"You remember how I struggled with Rock Hollow, and these being from the Case Files of L. J. Tibbs - sorry boss - I thought I'd use an actual case and just change the names and some details."

"Easy short hand," Tony grants, but there's neither admiration nor mercy in it. "Now if memory serves, and it always does, the prime suspect in that case was our own Apprentice Medical Examiner Dr. Samantha Sky."

"She wasn't with us then. Neither was she a Doctor."

"What did you do to her?" Ziva asks, her implication equally broad.

x

"Nothing. Exactly. It's just, well, she was central to the story, but I changed her name."

"Just like Tommy, Lisa and Tibbs," Tony grants. "What did you call her?"

"Sabrina." He cannot get out of this. "Sabrina Shore."

"From Samantha to Sabrina, still two blonde 60's witches, and from Sky to Shore. No stretch there."

"Did you get her permission?" Gibbs asks, knowing the answer all too well.

"He did not get ours," Ziva 'reminds' him.

Gibbs walks out.

"Does your wife appear in this one?" Ziva demands. She had not in the first two 'L. J. Tibbs' novels but she'd played a pivotal role in 'Cearbhall's Quest'. She was, in fact, the goal of said Quest.

"She made me promise never to put her into any of my books."

"We made you promise that," Ziva bites.

"Yeah," Tony says, "but Siobhan's the only one who can really hit him where it hurts." His glance to Ziva removes the need to say it, and he turns to his partner. "So, you never told us what you did to our impish bisexual B&amp;D-loving violinist cut-up."

"I made changes." The silence is agonizing. "She's not bisexual."

"She is a lesbian."

"How did you-?"

Ziva stands and walks out.

xxx

Ducky is still on vacation in Scotland with his companion Dr. Jordan Hampton, and Jimmy and Michelle Palmer are midway through a month long therapeutic vacation in Virginia - rather they had been - so Dr. Maura Isles, ME for Boston together with Apprentice ME Samantha Sky have been 'womanning' Autopsy.

Gibbs has worked with Maura Isles for a month and again with Samantha Sky for two weeks and considers himself a survivor, but though Sky has an additional two weeks he looks forward to Ducky's eventual return and the imposition of order. The next time two women of such exceptional natures take over Autopsy he will either schedule a vacation to Fiji or his own dissection.

When he enters through the pneumatic glass and metal doors Isles and Sky hadn't needed to change into their blue scrubs after the afternoon excursion but they have lifted the body out of the black body bag on the wheeled gurney and set it upon the first silver table. Sammy releases the man's feet, pauses long enough to give him a happy wave. Gibbs ignores it.

"How'd he die?"

Both women gape at him and he works to confine his smile.

"Agent Gibbs," Isles says in her best patient reprimand voice, "we only brought the body in less than five minutes ago."

"You need to drive faster."

"Would've changed nothing."

"Even so," Sammy joins in, "he's barely had time to warm up the table."

"Been dead a week."

"So it'll take a while."

x

No one will revisit the fact that the body had lain on the Palmer's bedroom carpet for between five and six days of sweltering DC mid-Summer, and that a test with the liver probe thermometer had initially revealed a core temperature higher than that in the recently air conditioned room.

"When will you know something?"

Maura comes around the table. "Special Agent Gibbs, I'm well aware of your desire for early answers, we've been through this many times and Ducky is used to it. I am also aware that this case hit very close to home for your team, very literally for Michelle and Jimmy. But I want you to be aware that we have done an Autopsy today for Agent Arnell's team prior to getting your call. Now we will do the External exam in full and transport everything up to Abby so she can begin her work.

"Then this man, who died of a nine inch deep crater in his side, will go into the Cooler to be scheduled for first thing tomorrow. You can keep your people in for a double, triple or quadruple shift, that is your prerogative, but by sundown I intend to be in bed."

x

He turns to Sky who stands at the foot of the table. Though young and with limited experience, she receives high evaluations from both Ducky and Isles and it's really hard to muck up the first steps of an autopsy.

"Er, I have a Concert tomorrow night, and I really have to rehearse." He steps past Isles, she backs away. "Abby's going to stay late, I know it." He continues to advance, she backs off.

"She always does when it's your team." He herds her around until she's backed into the head of the second silver table. "I need the quiet." She's pressed against the head of the table.

He's an inch from her, stares straight down on her, six two vs. five two.

"Agent Gibbs," Maura says, annoyed at his intimidation of the smaller girl.

He ignores her. "How many times have you performed that Concert?"

Her pale blue eyes are wide and she must swallow to answer. "About forty. But that's not the poin..."

He moves the inch closer, she bends away. He has her bent backward over the table. "You're needed here."

"I can't..."

"Agent Gibbs!"

Again he ignores her. "I thought you were the Palmers' friend."

"I _am_!"

He leans an inch further down and as she bends further away he can hear her gulp. "Stay and do the work."

"I _can't_. The Concert-"

"Skip the Concert!"

"_NO_!" She straightens and it's he who must give way as her perennially joyous eyes flash lightning. "I will _not_! I'm a Doctor and if that were a living patient I would drop everything and help him but he's not. Your ME, my boss, has already told you 'no' and I'm not going to undermine her."

"I'm your boss, and-"

"And I have a life outside of Medicine, one I love, and balancing the two may occasionally be hard but they're my life and I will balance them.

"Now you're the big boss here, second only to the Director and I do respect that, but you cannot and will not try to run my life. I am a Doctor and a Musician equally and I determine which I am at any given moment, not you!"

He leans forward again but she doesn't give as far. "Palmer's back. You can be gone tonight."

"True, if you want to reverse your own order and go against NCIS' regulations. You can even ban me from here and it'd tear my heart out and be a stupid move on your part since you told Jimmy why he can't work this case, but you _will not_ try to cut my life in half!"

Giving her his most severe glare he leans closer, she gives way but only half as far. Their faces are only three inches apart.

He pitches his voice so low only she can hear it, certain Isles cannot. "I thought you told everyone you're a Submissive."

Her pale blue eyes burn as she comes up, forces him to take a step back. "Damn you, yes, but only in _sex_." She advances on him, a few inches but it makes him give way and her voice is volcanic. "I'm a Sub and I like it but I will never, _ever_ be a _Slave_."

x

He takes a step back and gives her a slow, satisfied smile. "Been waiting a long time to see what you had in you."

He looks back to take in Isles. "Finish up tonight's work and I'll see you in the morning."

As he walks out he reflects upon Michelle Lee, Melanie Kelman, Karen Wetzel, Jennifer Shepherd, Siobhan O'Mallory, Maura Isles, Tina Larsen and now Samantha Sky. Why, when pressed hard, do only the women have the balls to press back?

xxx

"Abby?" The woman pulls her eye from the microscope lens and when she turns Ziva is taken aback, chides herself an instant later that she should never be surprised about anything having to do with the 'Mysterious of the Dark'.

Abby's attire is black and tight and depicts a white skeleton from toes to cervical vertebrae. Only the lack of facial makeup ends the illusion, but while Ziva doesn't care to check she has no doubt that the skeleton is accurate in every detail.

"Hey, Ziva, what's up? A little birdy told me the Palmers are back early."

It takes a bit of effort to look at her and not be shaken by the face poised upon the neck bones. "Would this bird be McGee?"

"I refuse to divulge the source of my cheeps." Ziva considers it clear she hasn't heard about the latest one; it is too soon, but she certainly will. "So, how do they look?" Abby asks in high anticipation of seeing her friends after half an enviable therapeutic vacation.

Ziva considers, but there is only one honest answer so far as she is concerned. "Not as good as when they left."

Abby drops about fifty points, her shoulders even more. "You're kidding."

"I do not kid, Abby."

"No, you don't. God, when they left they were on the verge of divorce."

"I think that might be the inevitable outcome."

"Oh, NO, we can't let that happen! We've got to-"

"Abby." The one word derails the woman's frantic buildup.

x

"What?"

"Sometimes when it comes to couples, it is best for them to let the inevitable happen."

"Are you saying you're giving up?"

"I am saying I never entered into it, and suggesting that neither should you."

"Well, I'm sorry, I can't."

"Do you remember the last time you attempted to step into and change a couple's relationship?" She can see in the scientist's face that the memory stings.

"I loved Tim and tried to pull him away from you and back to me," she admits, appropriately shamefaced. "It was wrong and I knew it - and he married Siobhan."

"Tim and I were never right for each other. We tried to force the relationship to work and it would have been a disaster if we had both kept lying to ourselves. The harder we worked, the more pain we caused each other and the more obvious it became that it was not meant to be. And it was further unwise to allow two people armed with Sigs to get into such a relationship as we had. He is happy with Siobhan. As much as either of us may have suffered from realizing that, Siobhan completes him and he her in ways we could not have."

"But just because Tim and you -and Tim and I - were wrong doesn't mean Jimmy and Michelle are doomed."

"Abby, sometimes we must admit that a relationship is not salvageable and we should let it run its course to dissolution."

"Maybe you can. I can't."

"Michelle assaulted Jimmy this afternoon in front of all of us because he is 'too nice'."

Abby can only stare.

* * *

Author's Note: To read the case that Tim would make into his novel 'The Other Locked Room', see my Second Season Episode 'Accused', available through my Profile.


	6. In Time for the Hinkiness

Chapter Six  
In Time For The Hinkiness

Jimmy Palmer is pulled out of restless sleep by arms that cling tightly to him and, as he opens his eyes to an unfamiliar blur, he can find nothing but Michelle, her head buried into his bare chest so only her hair is visible.

He embraces her, feels her bare back and, when he pets down her back, he finds that she's completely bare. Fragmented memories of what she'd called 'desperation sex' flicker in to fill out the moment.

It's hot; he doesn't have to see to know the air conditioner on her side of the bed must be off. There's no need now for blanket or sheet, even in the pre-dawn it's too hot.

He reaches back behind himself to where his glasses should be and to turn on the three bulb bronze touch lamp on his night table, but his search yields neither glasses, lamp nor night table. "'Chelle?"

"Don't let go," she whispers and her breath cooks his bare chest. "Please don't let go."

His eyes have adjusted enough to the early dawn light for him to see that the blur of this bedroom is the wrong blur. Their bedroom is light blue with royal blue trim and this isn't it. "It really happened, didn't it?" He feels her nod against his chest. "This is the Kenilworth Safe Apartment." Again the silent confirming nod, again her hair tickles his chest. The air conditioner isn't off, there's no AC at all, just an open window and no breeze to help.

He'd never been to Kenilworth, knows about it only that if home in Georgetown is as far west as they can go in the District, they're now virtually across the eastern border. Michelle hugs him tighter. "Are you okay?" he asks, feeling it's the kind of foolish question that has to be asked at whatever o'clock in the morning.

"Honey?" her warm breath plays along his chest. "Promise me something?" She sounds so lost, even more so than he feels.

"Anything."

"Promise me we'll always be together, that you'll never leave me. No matter what happens, no matter what anybody says, no matter what anybody does, promise me they'll never break us up, that you'll never leave me. Promise me. Please."

"Darling, are you afraid?" She nods against him. "Don't be. I swear, I'll never leave you, I'll never do anything, let anything come between us. I swear. You are _stuck_ with me." She doesn't say anything so, inspired, he quietly sings, horribly off-key, their version of that romantic song from 'Grease': "Hopelessly enameled to you..."

She looks up and he kisses her, but her lips are hot and he feels wetness on her cheeks.

x

The kiss lasts a very long time, neither of them willing to end it as they cling to one another, seek security and assurance as much as love. By the time they can let go the room, or for him the blur, is noticeably brighter.

"'Chelle, you love me," he says softly.

"With all my heart and soul," she whispers.

"Then would you do something for me? Please?"

She pulls him closer. "Anything, my darling love."

"Would you, please...?"

She clings more tightly to him. "Yes?"

"Tell me where my glasses are."

She bursts into ecstatic laughter, rolls out of his arms and in doing so displays a great deal of skin he can't see clearly. She leans off the bed, picks up his glasses from the floor, turns back and hands them to him.

"Fine place for them," he says, pulling them on. Now he can see her skin better.

"You were a wild man last night."

He hears more than the words. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

She shakes her head. "Uh uh, only the way I like it to feel." She kisses him again.

x

It's not easy to stop or to get up, but now that he has his glasses he makes himself stop - after a time - and looks around the brightening room. He hadn't seen it by much, they'd spent the evening in the outer room watching television and talking and got in here in a tangle of limbs. He remembers they'd found the bed by their falling over it. "_Pwew_."

"Isn't it? I think NCIS gives this to people they don't like or are trying to break."

"In that case, they really hate us."

"Tim did warn us that of the three it was the only one left."

"I can believe it."

He gets up, finds his boxers and shorts in separate parts of the room. Michelle makes no attempt to gather any of her clothes. Her blouse lies below the foot of the bed but he sees her leopard spot bra outside on the living room floor. For a moment he's about to wonder at that but quickly gives it up as one of his wife's unsolvable mysteries.

The matching panties are nowhere in sight, and he remembers the time he'd had to search NCIS, even in the most unlikely spots, for them after Dr. Mallard had found her bra in a drawer in Autopsy.

The panties had turned up days later in the lower right cooler, way in the back, and he'd been so relieved Dr. Mallard hadn't found those_._ He still hasn't figured out how either part had made it to their obscure resting places - perhaps her panties in the cooler had seemed a good idea? - and can only conclude that their encounter had been more fervent than either of them had realized.

The only thing she wears now is the sterling silver pendant he'd had made for her as an engagement gift which hangs nestled between her breasts. The slightly more than inch wide circle contains a five pointed star, and within the inverted pentagon formed by the lines of the pentagram is a cross; the symbol commemorates the union of her two Faiths, Wiccan and Christian. He's not happy to see it, but won't deny her her expression.

"Aren't you going to get dressed?"

She smiles up at him. "If the Neanderthal is coming back, this time I want to be ready."

To this he has no argument.

x

The outer room has less to recommend it than the bedroom does, except for being warmed with the closed windows on their right. To their left as they step into the room, and she scoops up the leopard bra to roll and toss it back to the bed are, in order, sink with cupboard above, stove, refrigerator and apartment door. On the far wall is a lumpy couch and against the wall immediately to their right is a cable television between the windows, perhaps the room's single saving feature. They each take a window, open and screen it. As the windows look out upon an alley Michelle feels safe in her nudity, but the limited space offers little hope for breezes. It's a Safe Apartment, but there could have been some concessions.

"First thing we get are some fans," he declares.

"Amen. But altogether, a Safe House has one great advantage."

"Yeah? Like what?" He'll give her a fortune if she can find even one.

"Well, no one knows we're here. We're all alone. We have two weeks of my guarding your body and your doing what you want to mine."

He pulls her in and she knows she's convinced him.

x

The folding table where they'd eaten Chinese take-out from across the street is still set in the middle of the room between two folding chairs; they had been stored at the wall to their right.

"Hungry, honey?" he asks.

"Starving, but for what?" The refrigerator is empty, hence last night's take-out. All that remains of that meal is a half bottle of soda, fortunately cold.

"You're right," he admits. "What could we eat?" She shifts her eyes significantly lower to another source of sustenance. "Food you can bite."

"_Kinky_," she says with a delighted smile.

"I'll go _out_ and buy _groceries_ we can eat."

She mimes a pout. "Spoil sport."

"Plenty of time for dessert. We have two weeks with nothing to do."

x

He reenters the bedroom, snatches from his open suitcase a tee shirt; good enough for a quick essentials shop. The temperature fell overnight to 76 and has already started its steady climb. Later they'll unpack and settle in. When he gets back he'll have a shower and cool off, then they'll go for a walk and pitch a tent in the first air conditioned store they find.

Returning to the living room after he pulls on sneakers - one had been at the foot of the bed, the other beside its head, he finds her taking out plates and glasses from the cupboard over the sink. "I'll be right back."

"Honey, be careful. Don't get lost." They'd seen this neighborhood only briefly, so neither has true bearings.

"Straight lines. I'll get something from the first place I see, then after breakfast we can do some real exploring."

She gives him a smile and very suggestive wink. "Hurry back."

He pulls her into his arms, his lips to hers and he fully enjoys her nudity. She doesn't let him move away, enticing movements against him remind him of so many pleasures. He pulls her even closer, their kiss intensifies.

Their bodies are hot already, but he'll never object to being burned and knows she won't either.

x

Finally he manages to force himself to release her, but she doesn't release him. "I'd better go," he whispers.

"Before you come," she whispers even more fervently.

They don't separate until he brings her to the door and, reaching backward, manages to get it unlocked and partially open. Now she must duck away lest too much be seen by anyone passing in the hall.

"Hurry back."

"I will. I love you."

"Forever," she promises.

xxx

The trek was short, only four blocks, but the store was well stocked and the prices were better than he'd expected. He managed to accumulate breakfast and lunch as well as a variety of other necessities. It took longer than he'd thought it would as the Checkout line was long, but he's back in slightly under an hour.

He opens the apartment door, three large plastic bags strain his left arm. He pushes the door shut, turns about, feeling very satisfied and optimistic about the next two weeks.

"Honey, I foun–" a clear glass rocketing toward his face and he shifts left barely in time. It shatters on the door, showers his back with shards that sting through his tee shirt.

Michelle is at the other side of the table. She snatches up the other glass. "_You Goddess damned PERVERTED son of a BITCH_!" She hurtles the glass at his face.

This time she doesn't miss.

xxx

When Leroy Jethro Gibbs arrives at NCIS' underground garage he doesn't take the elevator up more than two levels, half underground in the rear facing the Anacostia. Abby Sciuto normally works from 0800 to midnight, but this case centers around friends and colleagues so he knows she's extra motivated. Therefore it's with significant satisfaction that the elevator doors open and he sees through the lab door that she's already hard at work.

When he passes through the outer sliding glass door the rapid series of beeps makes the woman turn. She wears over her black miniskirt her equally dark 'Devil or Angel' tee shirt complete with red horns above her right breast and white halo surmounting her left. The legend between them declares _'I'm gomna live forever, God doesn't want me and the devil's afraid I'll take over.' _ She also wears her black wristbands and collar, the ones with the silver spikes. They're her Warrior accoutrements and announce to all who know her that she's ready to fight for answers and woe betide the evidence that doesn't surrender them.

"Gibbs! Good morning. You're in time for the hinkiness."

From anyone else that pronouncement - if anyone else in the world even used the word 'hinky' - would be a dire one. From Abby it means left side triumph. "I like your hinkiness," he assures her.

"Aww, that's so _sweet_."

"Give it to me."

"In a minute."

x

Abby Sciuto is also perhaps the only person on the planet, with the exception of his father, who could hope to survive such a deferral. However, since she has disappointed him only once in seven years, she's stocked up considerable latitude.

"Before she left last evening Sammy brought up Alan Stephens' clothes, the pieces blown out of him and so forth. Between Autopsy and the CS Agents I put together a picture, and in itself it's hinky."

Having spent too much time in the Palmers' bedroom with Stephens, he agrees.

"She also brought up all the maggots in the wound so I can give you a better time of death. I think Maura just wanted them gone, and Sammy definitely did. You should've seen her face."

"She'll get used to it."

x

"First let me disabuse you and yours of a misapprehension."

He restrains a smile. "You been hanging around Isles too long."

"She's a smart lady, Gibbs."

"No argument." He only wishes he would get lost in her encyclopedic knowledge a little less often. If she were less smart they might get along better, but then Ducky wouldn't have chosen her as a substitute, a decision he could live with. "But what do you want to abuse me with?"

"_Dis_abuse, Gibbs. Despite someone's pole vault to conclusions, I found no lithium or any of the remains of components that could possibly have come from a cell phone. I did find traces of C4, but that's not all. I found a piece of pulverized metal that I'm still analyzing. I'm _thinking_ a detonator will be found among the stuff CS people brought from the room, but I'll let you know about that soon."

"I'll settle for what you can tell me right now."

"Then I can tell you right now that I pulled some of these fragments of unexploded C4 from the decaying meat on and around the Palmers' bed, and several others Maura pulled from the hole in Stephens' side where they'd embedded themselves in the crater, tore through flesh to bury themselves but were readily visible in the x-rays. Good thing not all the C4 went off, there would've been a lot less soft tissue left. One piece is embedded in his pelvis. Sammy said the x-rays show it but they need to dig it out this morning."

So they did stay to do some work. He owes them thanks.

"He had the C4 on him while robbing the apartment?" To his knowledge neither his agent nor the pathologist have a safe nor much of anything to put in it other than Michelle's Sig, so why the heavy duty equipment? Time to ask them a lot of questions.

x

Rather than answering directly, she leads him to the table where three brown paper Evidence bags stand. Paper is used for wet items that must dry, though he hadn't seen anything on the body that hadn't dried a week ago. "Welcome, Gibbs, to the hinky part. You're gonna love this."

"Can't wait."

"This'll be worth getting out of bed today." She pulls on the latex gloves laying on the table, opens the closest brown paper bag, pulls out a mangled, bloody white tee shirt and, holding it by the shoulders, turns it so the large burnt and bloody hole faces him. The lower right side is gone halfway to the arm and to a quarter inch at the bottom.

"I swabbed the hole, inside and out, for traces of the explosive. I found them. Guess where."

He hates it when she says that. She'll try to coax a guess out of him and getting answers without complying is like pulling teeth, though he won't give her a wake-up call like he does his team. "Around the hole." She sets the shirt down on the table.

"Yes, but on the inside or the outside?" He gives her his 'I'm done guessing' glare. She lays the shirt out on the table and uses a probe to push back a bit of the gore stained material. All he sees is plenty of dried blood. "On the _in_side." She makes it sound more momentous than it deserves to be.

"He had the bomb inside his shirt?"

"No," she says with a smile, ready with a full serving of relish. "He had the bomb inside _him_."

xxx

"Abby says the bomb was inside Stephens," Gibbs announces as he enters the bullpen. DiNozzo, McGee and David are gathered about the plasma screen, he halts beside DiNozzo, who gets that distant 'reading from the cards' look that usually precedes a head slap.

"Escape from New York, 1981, written and directed by John Carpenter. Snake Plissken, played by Kurt Russell, must rescue the President. To make sure he does, Police Commissioner Bob Hauk, played by Lee Van Cleef, has him injected with miniature bombs." The man should first have made sure he was out of reach of the stinging reply. "Thank you, boss."

This is the first time he's had to deliver one so early in the day. "This guy wasn't trying to save the President."

"Not in the Autopsy Gremlin's place."

"Does Abby know what type of bomb it was?" Ziva asks, likely hoping to interrupt the facetiousness in favor of actual Agent work.

"Working on it. C4 is all she has for the moment. What are you working on?" The image displayed on the screen is yet another Booking shot of Stephens, this one from last August 14. He looks healthier than he had in the more recent photos Gibbs has seen.

"Stephens has never been significant. He's spent his life committing crimes and getting caught," McGee says.

Ziva says "He never learned from previous mistakes. He frequented the same bars and strip clubs, ate his meals in the same places. He never wore gloves no matter how many times he was identified by fingerprints, never covered his face no matter how many times he was caught on Security cameras, never varied his escape routines and after his crimes he had only four places he hid. It got to the point recently that Metro, knowing his signature style, took to waiting for him when he arrived at his crypts."

"His last arrest was for Felony Stupidity," DiNozzo concludes.

"Should have been," Gibbs agrees. "So how does an idiot like this wind up with a bomb inside him?"

"Programmed Expiration Date like the Replicants in Blade Runner?"

Gibbs considers trying another wake up call since the first evidently hadn't worked, but he walks to his desk instead. "Find out."

x

"Hard to believe any reasonably intelligent person would allow a bomb to be inserted into him," DiNozzo considers, "which means it'd be right up this guy's alley."

Gibbs wants to challenge the logic of this, but in the past year they've had two Psychiatrists who had programmed their patients as Assassins; a widow who held the team hostage in this very bullpen only to blow herself up in the mistaken hope they would break from Survivor's Guilt; a madman who crucified victims because he disagreed with their Religious views; an unrequited lover who imagined herself a Romulan agent determined to execute a Starfleet Commodore; an NCIS Agent who had gone rogue and assassinated nine other agents; an autonomous Warship which had tried to start a war; six women who had entered into a pact to murder one another's husbands a la 'Strangers on a Train'; a psycho who believed himself to be a Vampire and left a trail of dead women throughout the Eastern Seaboard; McGee had been injured and thought he was the Elf Lord and all the Agents were characters in his latest book; a psycho who kidnapped body painted women at a comic book convention and electro-tortured them to death; a pair of truly sick perverts set up innocent men to rape and murder their on-line dates; a man who built a house that could murder victims; a guy who threw his girlfriend off a building because she wanted to help him; a group of so-called surgeons who grafted wings onto drugged women and then sold them as winged slaves to the highest bidders, a researcher who hired an assassin to kill his teammates using a series of Fantasy inspired weapons; a psychotic madman obsessed with Abby who hunted her down and murdered anyone who got in his way; hired assassins sent out to kill the world's top Religious figures starting with the Pope; his own second ex-wife had arranged her murder so she could frame him for her death, a murderer who killed his victims with bullets made of ice plus still more cases that redefined 'weird', 'sick' and 'perverted'. The only thing that can be said about their cases this year is that the potential for hinkiness, as Abby would say, is unlimited.

"Check it out."

"Come on, Ziva, let's go track down the madmen."

"McGee, look on your web thingy for people with bombs inside them."

He reconsiders that order and wishes he'd never given it. Deciding he has to get out and get some air that's not filled with terminal insanity, he gets up and heads for Autopsy.

A moment later, when he remembers what awaits him there, he's inclined to smack the back of his own head.

xxx

When the glass and metal pneumatic doors slide open before him the blue scrubs clad women, as promised, are hard at work on either side of the silver table upon the corpse of Alan Stephens. Isles has her back to him, Sky looks up and waves. That the greeting is unusually sedate for the ebullient young woman is a hopeful sign that the silver scalpel that wags in her hand completely negates.

He steps to the head of the table and the corpse so he can see both women and they him, and watches as Isles draws out the man's heart and lungs and places them in the hanging scale to her left. He waits until she announces the weight of the three organs removed en bloc toward the microphone that hangs from the ceiling, and then Sammy picks up a plastic bagged remote control from the tray beside her and points it toward the recorder. The quiet beep sounds from the unit.

Isles and Sky remove the plastic shields from their heads and cover the body with a white cloth to preserve the integrity of the wound and the excavation they've done before they pull down the blue masks that cover their faces. Last to go are the latex gloves which are tossed into the pail at the head of the table.

He notices that Sky, as she has several times in this most recent tenure, wears soft ballerina slippers - _pink_, dear Lord - under the protective blue footwear. The pink ribbons cross-tied up her ankles hold the blue scrubs cuffs closed and the ribbons end in ornate bows. He'd never been in favor of a dress code since one had been imposed - briefly - to try to bring Abby into line, but perhaps individuality can be carried too far.

Then again, he'd never encroached upon Ducky's sanctum - with Palmer it hadn't been necessary - and this morning he has enough worries without considering the pair of Temps.

x

"What've you got?" is his way of greeting them.

"Such a headache I wish Michelle were here with one of her magical cures," Sky returns.

"Take two aspirins–"

"And call you in the morning?" she asks with a grin.

Gibbs doesn't give up easily or well, but this time he will for the sake of his own head. Hoping to make better progress with Isles, he gives her his 'don't play with me' look, the one that only works occasionally on Abby and far too rarely on the imp he's ignoring.

"The x-rays show something you'll like." She leads him over to the light wall which is filled with x-ray semi-transparencies. The picture of interest to her, therefore to him, is a front view of the corpse's hips. "Note that the bomb exploded on the right side but look here." She points to a sliver inside the left hip bone, tapered to a point but widening like an arrowhead with a short portion of the shaft.

"We'll have to cut it out," she says. "It's about two inches long but buried deep into the bone. Until we get it out, I can't even say for sure that it has anything to do with the wound on his right side, but I can't see any medical reason why it should be there."

Under her words they hadn't heard the rear door open, so hadn't known they weren't alone until a Scots accented voice asks "Perhaps you could use some additional help?"

x

Samantha whirls. "DUCKY!" she shrieks in a blast of ecstasy and dashes to the man, but before she reaches him he holds up his hands in firm command and she slides on the bootie covered slippers to a halt in front of him.

Mallard takes her arms below the shoulders in token restraint and plants a chaste kiss upon her forehead. "It's good to see you, my dear."

"I'm happy to see you too, Doctor," she says so sedately Gibbs gives in to astonishment.

Ducky has tamed Sky. He has to learn how.

x

Ducky, clad in black trousers, blue short sleeved shirt and Mallard tartan bow tie, approaches and the greetings Gibbs and Isles give him are more heartfelt. "How's Jordan?" Gibbs asks.

"Exceptional," Ducky replies, but Gibbs knows him well enough to know there's a depth of meaning only hinted at. His friend is never indiscreet, particularly about relationships, but he looks forward to a private conversation far richer in detail.

None of them hurry the reunion. Today, rather than traveling on the weekend or a Monday, is Ducky's scheduled return from his month's vacation in Scotland with Dr. Jordan Hampton, DC's City Medical Examiner, but he's not due in until tomorrow morning, Wednesday. "I returned last evening and this morning Anthony graciously updated me on my protégé's recent dilemma, so I thought to come in early and lend my support." He looks to the white covered corpse. "So, what have we here?"

When Isles pulls back the sheet and the three fill him in on the sixty time loser most often busted for stupidity who was removed from a woefully unsuccessful life of crime by a bomb buried under his skin, Gibbs wonders if the man is reconsidering his early return or looking with relish upon his latest outré mystery.


	7. When They Hurt Each Other

Chapter Seven  
When They Hurt One Another

Reverend Siobhan McGee, Chaplain of NCIS' Headquarters Division, stops herself from running her right fingertip along the top of the stiff white collar that encircles her throat. It's a bad habit she's learned she sinks into when she contemplates something vexing, but it can eventually mark the round collar above her light blue Clerical blouse if she doesn't restrain herself. She'd found too many mysteriously marked collars she'd had to re-bleach before George Donaldson told her about her habit.

She waits in her fourth floor office on her regular Tuesday at NCIS, her attention held on the papers spread upon her desk, the plans in preparation for next month's celebration for the Feast of the Patroness of Saint Mary the Virgin Church. The call she'd received a little over an hour ago had been anticipated since Timmy had told her over dinner of James and Michelle Palmer's unexpected return yesterday, sixteen days into their month long Retreat / vacation and the stunning surprise that had greeted them. He'd said nothing about the reason for their early return. Today she's still not sure he knows.

The conversation over dinner had started badly over the week old corpse in their bedroom - she feels sorry for all of the agents but is glad she neither had to see it nor to smell it - and it steadily declined to hit the nadir of petite Michelle slamming her much larger husband into a wall.

She's looking forward to this meeting with them and doesn't want it as well. At Michelle's request - no, pleading - she had arranged a month long sabbatical at Saint Francis Retreat House in Virginia, and sixteen days later they're back.

That Michelle's hope had been that getting away from NCIS in an effort to clear their minds and hearts and salvage their fragmenting marriage means their sudden return bodes no good.

"No, _this_ is no good," she whispers and tosses down the pen she'd been using to make notes on the upcoming Service. "No preconceptions." She closes her eyes, slowly crosses herself and focuses on prayer. There are many that apply and she finishes six of them before a knock, tentative and barely audible, on the door behind her pulls her from her devotions.

She turns the executive chair away from the desk, stands and takes a deep, steadying breath. "Who is it?"

"Jimmy and Michelle," the man's voice filters through the wood. She blesses herself a final time, crosses the room and pulls the door open.

x

It's rare that she opens this door and sees two people frozen in utter apprehension, but the fear in this couple's eyes can almost be touched. "Hello," she says as warmly as she can, hopes her smile is as welcoming as she needs it to be.

"We're sorry to intrude," Michelle says.

"Nonsense." After receiving the young woman's tear filled plea that they see one another as soon as possible all she can say is "Come in."

They walk past her as though along the last green mile to the electric chair. Siobhan's eyes flicker to James, to the swollen bruised left cheekbone; to the livid scratches upon the left side of his neck, upon his forearms, and one starting well above the top button of his shirt. Both his shins below his shorts are bruised; the marks horizontal and thin, as though the result of hard kicks.

When they sit down as stiffly upon opposite ends of the couch to her right, Michelle on the door side, James close to her desk and plenty of space between them, she quickly scans Michelle's arms and legs beyond blouse and skirt but finds no injuries. But the injuries James has suffered have a very evident cause, and lead her to grave concerns regarding her hope that things might have improved for the couple. Combined with Timmy's tale, it is a grave matter indeed.

The door partially closed, though she needn't have been concerned for neither of them look anywhere but straight ahead at the file cabinets, she reaches to the outer side, slides out the brown shingle engraved in two lines of white 'Rev. S. McGee - Chaplain' and reverses it, slides in 'Do Not Disturb'.

She shuts the door and still neither of them break their fearful forward stares, so she steps directly in front of them and waits. And waits.

Michelle, on her right, is the first to look up. "Thank you for seeing us," she says, her voice tiny.

"Of course." She'd begged for this meeting.

James finally meets her eyes. "We're back."

x

This more than anything points up his distress. She steps to her leather chair, turns it around to face them and sits down, smoothes her black skirt.

The room is intentionally Spartan, the sole decoration over her desk being a Crucifix upon which Jesus' arms, rather than being nailed to the wood, reach out in a comforting gesture. The barrenness; her desk and chair, a couch and set of filing cabinets, is intended to emphasize that nothing has her attention other than those who come to her. On the same theme, there's nothing for James and Michelle to look at but Jesus, herself or each other.

"What happened?"

Now, and for the first time since coming in, they do look at each other, but the silence builds, grows longer, wraps about to smother them. It's obvious that neither wants to be the first to answer.

Siobhan, however, has plenty of time. She punches no clock, has set no appointments. They'd appealed for this meeting - well, Michelle had - but she can wait in silence longer than they can, no matter how long that may be.

On Contemplative Retreats she's gone for hours.

Finally, and apparently trying to make things sound as little bad as possible, James looks across to the cabinet before him. "We were, uh, asked to leave."

x

She's astounded. The Franciscan Retreat House is a welcoming and open Community. She spends at least one weekend a year there to 'recharge her batteries' and always comes away renewed and fulfilled. That's why, when Michelle had come to her with her plan to help James get away to clear his head and to give them a chance to deal with mounting problems in their marriage, she hadn't hesitated in her choice.

"Why?"

He still answers the filing cabinet. "We were considered incompatible with them."

She doesn't believe this. She knows the Brothers of the Society of Saint Francis even outside her own vacation times and they are far from mentally cloistered. The most aggressive sinner, which neither of these two are, could find a welcome.

"Incompatible?" She lets her full disbelief carry through, says quite definitely with that tone 'I didn't get this collar yesterday'.

Michelle still faces forward but her eyes turn away toward the door. Is she seeking escape already? "It's my fault," she admits, her whisper even smaller than before.

"How is it your fault?" she asks in normal conversational volume, trying to bring the young woman up.

She does look back. "I was in the Reading Room. You know it?"

"Of course." She's spent uncounted hours in the book lined room either reading or in pleasant conversation with the Brothers, Sisters and other guests.

"Someone saw my pendant; it was inside my blouse but it peeked out when I bent over to get a snack off the coffee table. One of the other women asked about it."

x

She wears the emblem outside her beige short sleeved blouse now so it hangs on the silver chain to between her breasts. It's the silver circle enclosing a silver five pointed star, the publicly familiar emblem of Wicca, but within the inverted pentagon James had added a Cross to commemorate her dual Faiths before presenting it to her as an Engagement gift. She wears it so frequently it's become unusual to see her without it. "I never imagined not being honest."

"Couldn't go a month without talking about Wicca," James says sotto voce, bitterness firing his tone.

She whirls on him and her anger blasts through the room. "Look, I'm _sorry_! Okay? I said I was sorry a hundred times! I'm sorry I ruined our Retreat. I'm sorry I got us asked to leave. I'm _sorry_ I wore the necklace _you_ gave me! I got careless. I didn't expect them to think it was so dangerous! A star and a _cross_ are not _subversive_. I was talking to someone I thought was nice; I didn't think I would be _Reported_! I'm sorry, okay? I'm _sorry_!"

"I don't care about being thrown out! It doesn't matter."

"You care. You didn't speak to me all the way home because you said that place was your only chance to stop the nightmares and the guilt and save our damned marriage!"

"It's damned, all right."

x

She draws back as if he'd slapped her and the silence is smothering. Siobhan softens her voice. "James, you don't mean that."

"Oh, I don't? She says I'm too nice–"

"You _are_. You wouldn't even get mad at that damned bastard who ruined our apartment so now we have to move!"

"We are _not_ moving! You want me to get mad? Fine! I'll get mad! You're not the only one who does but you've enough temper for both of us! It's like living with a damned Volcano!"

"I thought you liked Hawaii."

The segue to their honeymoon catches him off guard, but she can't distract him from anger she'd lit the fuse to. The dam has exploded, chunks fly away under more than a year's pressure and it's too late to shore up the wall.

"Then a _Maniac_! I walked in this morning and you were berserk. We'd had a nice morning, I went shopping for breakfast, came home and you were crazy! Look at this!" He points to his face, holds out his scratched arms to her, opens the buttons of his shirt to show his neck and upper chest, points down to his injured legs. She won't look so he turns to Siobhan, arms out to her. "Look at this!"

Michelle whirls, her tone volcanic. "_You deserved it_!"

"_WHY_!"

It takes seconds for the echoes of his shout to fade.

x

"Michelle?"

She leans forward as though to cut him from her vision, focuses only on the priest. "His cell phone automatically downloads to his laptop. I used it yesterday to take photos of the Crime Scene, our _bedroom_, before the others arrived. Then this morning I took out the laptop to check them."

"So? What reason is that to attack me?"

Siobhan also feels lost by this.

Michelle doesn't answer him, directs the answer to her. "I didn't tell him because I wanted to wait until we were here so you can find out what a _perverted_ _bastard_ he is!"

"What did I _do_?"

She whirls on him and spits "_I found your stash, you son of a bitch_!"

x

Siobhan sees the color drop from James' face and his eyes fill with fear. Michelle's, when she sits back, burn with incandescent fury. She reaches out to each of them, her hands motioning for them to stop. "James, Michelle, I want you both to calm down and tell me, calmly and quietly, what this stash is."

She'd expected she was hoping for too much and isn't disappointed.

"_Tell_ her!" Michelle commands the frightened man. The look in his eyes tells her he's unable to say anything.

"James, please don't be afraid. What is this 'sta-"

"The _stash_," Michelle cries, hate flooding her voice, "is over five hundred naked pictures! Of _me_!"

x

James turns to her, clearly trying to explain to someone who's not furious with him. "Since before we were married, while we were still dating..." Embarrassment silences him.

"Yes?"

"I took a lot of pictures of 'Chelle. Sexy pictures, erotic pictures, of her naked, or wearing... not much, even recently. My phone downloads to Dropbox on my laptop. This way I had them on my laptop at home and could also look at them at work."

"I see." She turns to the furious woman. "And you didn't know he was doing this."

"Of _course_ I knew!" She turns on Jimmy. "And I _trust_ Tim - better than I trust _you_ now - to only look at the Crime Scene photos so do _not_ start on me!"

"But–"

"Do _Not_!"

x

Siobhan leans forward again, motioning 'stop', not wanting to wonder how Timmy could figure in this. "Michelle, James, could we please focus on one thing at a time? I promise you we'll get to everything." She doubts, however, it will be possible to touch on everything today. There are too many issues bursting to the surface. "You said Michelle knew about the pictures you took on your cell phone."

"She posed for all of them. Some of them - a lot of them - were really explicit."

She looks to Michelle, feeling more lost by the second. "Thennnn... you're mad because they might have been seen at work?" If so, why give the phone to Timmy, and should she ask him tonight if he saw anything? She prays not.

"Oh, who cares about that?" the furious woman exclaims. "I was happy he could enjoy himself. I was glad to do it. And it made the after-photo sessions so much hotter!"

x

Siobhan stands up, turns away to the crucifix on the wall, prays to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and finally turns back to the fragile apprehension in James' eyes and the searing rage in Michelle's.

"I'm sorry," she says to the discordant couple, "I am really having a hard time understanding your issue."

"The _issue_," Michelle says, her voice volcanic as James goes very still, as though if he doesn't move the monster won't see and kill him, "is that out of over five hundred sex shots of me _I posed for less than three hundred of them_!"

xx

In the sepulchral silence Siobhan needs no more explanation. She fears that what's to be inside that crypt is this couple's marriage and James is holding the spade.

She prays now more fervently for wisdom - no, that God will use her lips to speak through, for a single mistake could devastate this union and she doesn't know what to say.

She goes to her chair, carefully sits down and every to now ignored creak of springs violates the graveyard silence.

x

When she and Timmy had returned so joyously from their honeymoon in Ireland four months ago in the earliest wakening of April, the women of NCIS and of other Military Law Enforcement Agencies suffered a devastating attack.

It had started innocuously enough with a Feature article in 'We' Magazine over a month before, spotlighting the women of NCIS, OSI, CID, CGIS and others. Had it been left to that it would by now have assumed its rightful place as a pleasant and satisfying memory of their proverbial 'fifteen minutes of fame'.

Sadly, it had not. The scores of pre-selection pictures taken of a myriad of women, herself included, had been stolen and sold to unscrupulous men, men who'd used their God-given talents abominably to torment and hurt in exchange for fame. The agents' heads had been grafted onto the nude bodies of uncounted other women. Each agent photographed for that magazine article, and many more women who had not made the final published edition but whose pictures had nevertheless been taken, had each suffered from scores of fabricated images ranging from the pornographic to the nauseating.

No one had been spared the humiliation. She'd seen images of herself in such situations that even today spark nightmares of public exposure and humiliation. Since each person had initially been photographed in her usual location, her photo session had been at Saint Mary the Virgin. There had been nude bodies grafted under her face to make it appear as though she were wearing only her white collar, several with the sacred Altar as the background and these had devastated her worst.

And it had not been static poses. What they'd been depicted as _doing_ in that nauseating pornography was the most horrific of all.

x

NCIS had spared no effort to help its own, and the collective talents of agents from many disciplines had worked coordinated wonders to eradicate this blight. Wonders had been wrought by Timmy and others in the quest to remove those horrid images from the Web, but even so there had been too many consequences for the brutalized women. In this building alone Susan Carter's wedding was delayed and plans remain in tatters, Maria Aveniya's fragile marriage had been shattered, Janet Levy had tried to commit suicide and only God's timely intervention in sending Ziva David and Lisa DuBois to intervene had saved Janet's life and she's still convinced that those photos had prompted what had happened last week to the already devastated Agent.

She's not confident the woman will return to NCIS when she recovers from her injuries.

Everything that could be done, legally and quasi-legally, to remove those pictures and to punish the offenders had been done. One villain had suffered the ultimate penalty and many trials are still pending.

But even with these extensive successes each and every woman, herself included, knows that absolutely nothing can be done about the unknowable numbers of pictures that have been downloaded and preserved throughout the planet. They must content themselves that the pictures are gone from the Web. Those that are not eradicated must be ignored or forgotten lest madness consume the victims.

The one thing they can cling to, their one certain assurance of safety and protection in all the horror and humiliation, is that no one they know or work with would ever collect these images. No one would ever _betray_ their fellow agents.

Unrealistic as this certainty is, they must cling to it or collectively they must stop trusting those closest to them and suffer worse consequences.

Therefore, they must implicitly believe, must cling to, the fact that no one they know, work with and must literally trust with their lives would ever, _ever_ raise the demon of humiliation again.

Siobhan McGee stares into James Palmer's eyes and has absolutely no idea what to say.

x

x

x

"James?" Only a slight change in the still man's eyes says he's heard her. 'Please, Father, let Michelle be wrong.' "Did you?"

He looks down and she barely hears him whisper "Yes."

Ice hardens her arteries, her stomach churns and she fights the nausea. She knows she should concentrate strictly upon the couple before her, on their needs and chaos and the unraveling tendrils of their marriage, but she can't think past fear. She'd put the fear behind her months ago. She'd trusted because she must. She'd put it... "James..." she can't speak aloud, has to force the whisper through lips too petrified to move, "did you collect any of me?"

His head flies up. "NO!" A different kind of horror. "No. Only of 'Chelle. No one else, only of '_Chelle_!"

x

She knows she shouldn't feel relieved, not with a marriage shattering before her eyes, but she can't help it. She tries to push relief aside, to shove it away as quickly as she can. The flood of fear, now impotent, makes her tremble and her stomach still churns. She fights as hard as she can, prays as fervently as she ever has. But she has to say something even if it's long before she can.

"James, why?" He stares at her and she wonders if he does have an answer. He must, and she must find it. "James, you collected pictures that were - that were not of your wife, and kept them with pictures that are." She sees his agreement in his eyes. "Why?"

Several long seconds, then he shakes his head. She turns to the woman beside him.

"Michelle, how did that make you feel?" she asks, tries to close off her view into her own feelings and concentrate on the couple in front of her.

"I'm pissed! One thing for him to have pictures of me he took of me but _those_ are _porn_! They're smut! They're–!" She turns on him. "What are you doing with them?"

"I'm-"

"Aren't I enough for you? Haven't I let you take plenty of really sexy pictures for when we're apart? What are you doing with that _smut_?"

"I–"

"How the hell did you even get them? NCIS scared so many Fakers to take their stuff down by what happened to Trovillot!"

"I down-"

"Why would you even want–?"

"Michelle," Siobhan's quiet word silences her - for the instant, "you've asked James five, six questions. Please let him answer."

"He'd _better_!"

x

For a long moment he's silent. Then, staring at the carpet, he admits in a quite voice, "I don't know. I don't know why I-"

"YOU DON'T KNOW?"

"Michelle, _please_." She inches forward, drops her voice. "James, you do know. You knew when you did it. You know now. Tell us. Please."

He looks up. "I wanted..."

"Yes?"

"More."

"What more?"

He looks down to the floor, stares at it, slowly looks up, forces himself to look up, to meet her eyes, to say it. "More 'Chelle."

"I don't understand," Siobhan confesses. He has all the Michelle Lee Palmer that there is.

"Those pictures, many of them are really beautiful. They're–"

"They're _horrible_! They're _smut_ and _porn_ and I thought they were _gone_! How can my own _husband_ have them? You should see them, they're-" She halts at the priest's upraised hand.

"I've seen some of what those men did to me, and for months I was scared to look my own friends and my Congregation in the eyes. I thank God the arrests and prosecutions were so heavily reported or I'd still be paying for that nightmare. I have no desire to see the pictures of you."

"How would you feel if Tim had a collection of other people's sex pictures of you?"

"I refuse to get into that," she declares, hoping she's hidden her shudder. "We're talking about the pictures of you."

"They're horrid."

"No, they're not." Jimmy only avoids his wife's outraged lashing out by a signal from Siobhan. "They're not. A lot of them are..." he loses his nerve at her glare, but rallies to finish, "...really sexy."

"They're not _me_. They're my face but not my _body_."

"They're ones I can't get."

"LIKE _WHAT_?"

"You naked in the bullpen, or at Crime Scenes in just your cap, or on a ship, or outside on the front lawn by the sign."

"You're saying," Siobhan says, hoping to get through the point before Michelle can interrupt, "that they represent pictures of Michelle you could never obtain in real life, but are enough like her that you could fantasize about her at work, out on the front lawn, in MTAC and so forth?"

He nods, too deeply ashamed to say it.

"You never _asked_," Michelle says through tightly clenched teeth. "We might have tried something. Look at what we managed while we were dating."

Backed into the wall too often, he raises a measure of his own outrage to strike back with "You weren't ever supposed to find out! You had no _right_ going through _my_ laptop!"

She shifts away to her left to the far edge of the couch, turns completely away, very demonstratively shuts him out.

x

Siobhan waits several moments, sees that neither of them is willing to give or to hear. She decides to take an unusual action so she leaves her chair and sits down in the space between them. She waits until the surprised couple has each turned to look at her, hence each other beyond her, and she's sure she has their attention.

"James, this issue isn't about rights or privacy, but please take a moment to quietly see Michelle's feelings."

Before he can say anything she looks to her left. "Michelle, this isn't about smut or porn. He's told us there are no pictures of anyone else. Just you."

"Then why–?"

"Please let him answer." She gets up, returns to her chair, leaves the couple to stare at each other from opposite ends of the couch. Neither says anything. She smoothes her black skirt. Waits. "James?"

He takes a deep breath, steadies and prepares himself. Michelle, at the far end of the couch, can see her and she holds her hands upon her lap upward in a stop signal, imploring silence.

It's some time before he's prepared, and that's after Michelle has forced her expression into a receptive countenance.

It's a mask as fragile as their marriage.

x

"I took, kept the pictures," he admits softly, not looking at her but at the door well beyond, "before anyone did anything to take them down. I don't know why I did it, not now. Then, well, they were... sexy."

"Some of those women have bigger boobs than I do. They shave their twats too but they're not _mine_, you can _see_ that! You said you didn't _want_ me to get a boob job, that you like me as I am. You want me to get big ones? You want-?"

"NO!"

"THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

"I WANT YOU!"

"YOU _HAD_ ME - UNTIL _THIS_!"

"Michelle-"

She glares at her. "You should be on my side!"

Siobhan leans in, waits until Jimmy turns toward her, lowers her voice to so soft a whisper they can barely hear and must listen intently. "Michelle, James, I am on no one's side. I love the both of you. I'm only asking that you love each other."

"I _do_ love him!"

"I love her."

"Good," she says aloud. "Something we can agree upon. Let us see if we can find more."

x

She slowly leans back, draws out the quiet moment, and when she does speak she keeps her voice as low and soft as she can so they must listen to hear. "James, I suspect you were tempted and gave in to the thrill of seeing Michelle in situations and settings that couldn't happen in real life and that you don't have the skill to create. You had the pictures you both agreed upon, but there was an illicit thrill of having something else too, something you could indulge in fantasies of Michelle on."

"Well... yes..."

"You looked at them but you thought only of Michelle."

"Yes."

"They helped your fantasies."

"Yes."

Michelle reaches out, touches his arm, gets him to look to her. "Which ones?"

"That's for your private talk," Siobhan says in normal tones. "The point is that you are foremost in his thoughts and in his heart."

"Then delete them!"

"I will. I promise."

"Then... maybe... we'll see about some better replacements. _Maybe_."

"I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I was mad. About having to leave the Retreat. It wasn't your fault. It's just that I had such hopes of this month helping. And it was. I was starting to deal with having killed Franklin and then we-"

She leaps up, startling both of them. "Franklin, _Franklin_, FRANKLIN, I am sick to death of Franklin! I've spent a _year_ trying to help you deal with your guilt and your pain and never _once_ do you help deal with _mine_!"

x

He'd fallen back in the couch at her first outburst, astonished at her sudden re-ignition. "What pain?"

"I was _Raped_!

"_What_?" He leaps forward.

"_I WAS RAPED_!" she shrieks so loudly the walls seem to tremble. "Seven _times_ raped and you never _knew_ it! You don't care. You've _never_ cared!"

He stands up and they're so close yet fury wedges between them. "What do you mean I don't care? WHAT rape? What seven ti-?"

"You don't or you'd let me vent! But I kept quiet, tried to help you, shoved everything in to devote myself to helping you, you son of a _bitch_! Like when I got locked in that sauna and Tim and I thought we were going to Die when the temperature was at 180 and we had to strip to our underwear and we were cooking and passed out while we were carving '_Goodbye_' notes and were going to Die and when they got the door open all you cared about was we were in our damned underwear! SHE didn't freak because she Trusted her Husband but did you ever stop to trust your WIFE? Then I got trapped in that Death House and almost SUFFOCATED! I almost DIED! Gibbs and DiNozzo rescued me but I was THIS CLOSE to being DEAD! And then when Jennifer and Abby and I went to that Grand Opening that Bastard tried to RAPE me!

"I was hurting, I was _suffering_, and I put it all away to help you, you fucking selfish Bastard! Damned good you have nightmares every night," she slams her fist into his chest, "you're a _Murderer_!"

His open hand comes up fast, to hit back or slap her hysterics away neither woman is sure for she's on him hard. "You fucking Hit me, I'll make your hand _EXPLODE_!"

"That's _Enough_!" Siobhan gets between them. She's appalled at herself for doing so; she's trained to find better ways but she must stop this. From anyone else that threat would be hyperbole, but she's seen and heard enough of what this woman's capable of when she uses talents she can still hardly believe in to not risk the furious counter-strike.

Things had been starting to recover, now a new dam - or rather a very old collection of dams - have burst and what can she do about it?

"Both of you sit down." Whether it's horrified astonishment at what they'd done, the priest's fire or lingering resistance, neither moves. "Sit. _Down_."

x

When they comply, more automatic obedience than volition, Siobhan declares "I'm imposing a two minute Cooldown, and I mean two." She grabs her own chair, wheels it before the stunned couple and sits down before them.

For as long as possible she draws out the moment until she feels able to remove the anger and frustration from her own voice and to speak kindly and persuasively. She's not sure how well the pair benefit from the forced silence, only that she has to do - to say - something to try to mend this widening rift.

"James, you would _never_ have considered raising your hand to Michelle-"

"_No_. But _what_ rape?"

She holds up her hand. One thing at a time or nothing will work. "Michelle, no matter how much... talent... you have or what it is, you would never have considered using it on James."

"No _never_!" The horror she'd related to Ziva stabs her and she tries to put it aside.

"But you di–"

Siobhan cuts him off hard. "Never, she said, just as you would never hit her."

"No I wouldn't."

In their eyes she can see only guilt, but guilt and remorse aren't what she's looking for.

x

There are so many things that burst out in that tirade. Where to begin? "Michelle, why did you never tell James about these things? About having been gang raped? About suffocating? About-"

"I did tell him about the Ventura house - but that was all I told him about. I told him about when Tim was captured but only told him about their torturing me, not that they raped me. I didn't think he could _handle_ the rest."

"Why not?"

"He was going through so much back then, studying for his Doctorate, not being able to take how dangerous my life was. I was just back into the Field for a little while and was assuring him I could handle it. So I made everyone keep it secret."

"Everyone?"

"Tim was there in that room we were captured in but they had him in chains, he couldn't help me," she turns to Siobhan. "You remember." She'll do no more than nod. She wants to forget those horrible days. "Abby got it out of me, Gibbs suspects but hasn't asked but everyone else..."

"Tell him now."

She very clearly doesn't want to speak, but by her own rage she's left herself no choice.

"It was after the incident when Tim got hurt and thought he was the Elf Lord. We were watching him, Tony, Ziva and I, afraid he might have a relapse..."

x

The agonizing story takes a very long time, both for the horror and her breaking. Jimmy holds her as she forces the story out and cries and fights to continue as he listens in silent dread. By the time she forces out the end they're both weeping, clinging tightly.

"Please keep me," she begs. "I need you to keep me."

"Always."

"Please. I'm sorry. Please don't leave me."

"I won't."

"Please don't..." she can't speak any more, the sobs robbing her of her voice.

Siobhan very quietly stands up, goes to and silently opens the door, steps through and eases it closed.

xxx

When the two men stop before his desk Tony DiNozzo looks up, surprised. Though he's seen the men scores of times over the years, Senior FBI Agent Tobias Fornell for one of the first times aboard Air Force One in the pre- and peri-Kate Todd days and Metro Homicide Detective Jeffrey Carpenter even prior to that, in his pre-Lieutenant days, this is the first time he's seen both of them at the same place and time.

"Well, looky here, what've we got?" he announces as much to McGee and David who look on as curiously. "The non-team of Fornell and Carpenter. Farpenter." He doesn't love the sound of that. "Cornell."

Jeff looks to Tobias, gets a shrug. "Cornell is acceptable," he tells Tony.

"What've you got, DiNutso?"

"_I've got_–" he winds down. "I don't know what I've got. What are we talking about?"

"About NCIS encroaching on our case."

"Oh, that!" He deflates. "I have absolutely no idea."

"Double teaming my people, Tobias?" Gibbs asks as he passes on the way to his desk. He sits down before addressing his other old friend. "Hi Carp. Long time no see."

"Well this time it's not 'lost another one to Nickis', LeeJay. This time we're ahead of you."

"Glad to hear it. In what?"

"And why is it," Fornell asks as he crosses the bullpen to confront him directly, "that any time someone encroaches on an FBI case, nine out of ten times it's you?"

"You're lucky. But what did you get so lucky in this time, Tobias?"

"Your people raised enough red flags at the Hoover Building to outfit a Beijing parade."

"Glad to know they're doing their jobs. Why do I owe them dinners?"

"Alan Stephens, the guy that got part of his abdomen blown out?"

"Yeah?"

"He's number four."


	8. No More Secrets

Chapter Eight  
No More Secrets

Senior FBI Agent Fornell's pronouncement is enough to blast all attempts at banter as the Agents realize their odd burglary death has assumed Federal proportions.

"What do you mean 'he's Number Four'?" DiNozzo demands but by then Gibbs is out from behind his desk to confront the two visitors.

"What's going on?"

"You didn't know?"

"We didn't know." He's big enough to admit a little lack of knowledge if he has the prospect of gaining a great deal more.

"Looks like the blackout is still effective," MPDC Homicide Detective Lt. Jeffrey Carpenter confirms with Fornell.

"It's effective, Carp. Give."

"You first," Fornell counters.

"Alan Stephens is dead. Your turn."

x

The problem the three men face is that their close association means each knows the other far too well and no amount of subterfuge or concealment will be tolerated, not when complete information is needed for them to do their jobs effectively.

Carpenter looks to his associate. "Mentioning the blackout killed it."

"I know." Fornell looks back to his best nemesis. "Last Friday Peter Calienti stepped out of his house in Spring Valley, DC, started down his street and his back exploded. He had a hole the size of a volleyball centered where his left kidney should be."

"A Patrol car was halfway up the block," Carpenter picks it up, "and fortunately put a cap on it before ZNN and half the Fourth Estate could show up. Publicly it went down as a drive-by shooting.

"Saturday Carlos Malfozio was found in an alley in Adelphi, Maryland but he was missing his head. It'd been blown off at the neck and rolled thirty six feet away. When we got wind of it - that kind of news travels fast on the police intranet - it was too weird for us, back to back explosive deaths, so my bosses called in the FBI."

"Sunday," Fornell concludes, "Steven Wetmore in Potomac, Virginia dies of a hole in his chest and now your guy yesterday."

"Very impressive," Gibbs grants, "but one problem. Stephens, we figure, got hit five days ago, which makes him not number four but number one and you guys are due one for yesterday or today."

"Damn," Fornell sums up all their feelings.

xxx

Rev. Siobhan McGee rests in the second floor Lounge, head back and eyes closed, hands folded over her stomach, thoughts on prayers and things she feels she could have said to the young couple far better than she'd managed when her cell phone begins playing a Men's Choral rendition of 'Eternal Father, Strong To Save'. It's the Naval Hymn, her collective selection for anyone from NCIS other than for those she's particularly close to - they each have their own - but when she looks at her screen the display reads M Palmer.

She'd considered changing the woman's tone to the theme to 'Bewitched', as Michelle has long ago crossed over from NCIS charge to friend but she'd wondered if it would be facetious. Either way she won't do it until she can divine a suitable choice for her husband. The 'Quincy' theme _is _facetious.

She still hasn't decided what to say if her previous efforts haven't bourn fruit. She'd left the couple in her office, dropped down to the third floor only long enough to see from the elevator that Timmy and the rest of his team were busy with Agent Tobias and a Metro Homicide Detective whose name she's forgotten before she dropped down further to the Lounge. Now she ends the music before the choral singing can become a disturbance to the agents around her.

"Hello?"

/Mother McGee? We wanted to let you know you can have your office back - and thank you./ She can hear the woman's smile in her voice, which also sounds relieved. /We're heading back to Kenilworth./

"Just a minute. I'll be right up," and in a very short time the three are in the Chaplain's office after she's restored the door shingle. The first thing she's relieved to find is that the tension from the couple is a shade of its former self. "So, what did you both work out?"

x

"We made a deal," Michelle tells her.

"Okay. Deals are good. I like deals." She searches their faces. "What's yours?"

"I agreed to go back to seeing Dr. Gyves," James says. "Regularly this time."

"I'll keep praying for you." She looks expectantly to the petite woman beside him.

"As long as I sign up for, and keep going to, an Anger Management Program. I drop out, he drops out."

"Reasonable." She doesn't think so, but she's heard worse incentive deals and this at least buys time to come up with a realistic one.

"Actually, this time I think it's going to work," she says. "My problem was trying to keep everything bottled up, then getting upset when I was putting myself so far out to help him and he wasn't doing the same."

"I didn't _know_," he insists.

"Know what?"

"The beating I took from that nuòruò de húndàn while on Abby's Protection Detail and nearly getting shot, then when 'Dracula' tried to rape me at the Haunted House party-"

"Wait!" She can hardly believe these outrageous additions to the earlier litany of incidents going back for well over a year had also been withheld. She'd thought that, in her fury, Michelle had exaggerated; though what she'd said had seemed to shock James, it didn't seem reasonable. "You told James _none_ of this either?"

"Not a thing," he confirms. "Other than nearly suffocating in Webster Springs. That she did tell me about - when the case was over."

"I..." she looks away, studies the carpet. "I didn't think he could handle it.

x

Siobhan won't point out that, one at a time and when they'd happened, these things and others would have been endurable and might have strengthened their union. Collectively, and all at once - worse, as secrets kept and emotions festering... "And now?"

"No more secrets. I'd sworn when I told him about Ventura that I'd keep the 'lines of communication' open, and I failed."

"And I'd been scared of 'Chelle going back out as a Field Agent when she'd first gone back down from Legal, and she knew it. I'd told Ziva, so I guess it's half my fault."

"Half?"

Siobhan touches her arm. "Quit while you're ahead, young lady."

"Okay."

x

Siobhan, obliged to remember too much of those days, things she's also tried to repress and forget - maybe a mistake of her own? - decides that this is as far as the couple can go today. But before they depart, they must be guided in a direction that can begin their rebuilding - or at least their healing.

"James, Michelle, we'll talk about this more, but there's much you two have to say to each other."

"I guess so," Michelle says.

"Yes," James declares.

"We'll talk about the sauna. We'll talk about the suffocation house. We'll talk about Dennis Whitney and his cohorts - _not_ a favorite subject for me either. We'll talk about everything, but for this morning we must finish."

She waits until they're both able to accept that this is today's finish, raises two fingers to touch her own forehead, holds the position. "In the Name of the Father..." She waits until she has their participation, then continues "and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen," she finishes with her open hand upon her heart.

"Amen," they reply in subdued chorus.

"Now, do both of you remember what I said at your wedding?" She's glad of the mystified stares.

Jimmy finally bites the bullet. "You said a lot of things."

"Yes, I did. But I'm thinking of the Prayers I offered for you both. 'Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow and a companion in joy'."

"Amen," they answer in broken chorus.

"Grant that their wills may be so knit together in your Will, and their spirits with your Spirit, that they may grow in love and peace with you and one another all the days of their life."

"Amen."

"Give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault and to seek each other's forgiveness and yours."

This time a much more contrite "Amen" and she knows her point is half made.

"Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt and joy conquer despair."

"Amen."

"Bestow on them, if it is your will, the gift and heritage of children, and the grace to bring them up to know you, to love you and to serve you."

This time Michelle's 'Amen' is so emphatic that James' is derailed and she must work to maintain her flow.

"Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others."

"Amen."

x

Rather than continuing, she reaches out, takes their hands and places one in the other's, sandwiched between hers.

"Most gracious God we give thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life. We thank you also for consecrating the union of man and woman in his Name. By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and woman. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them to all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders and a crown upon their heads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joy and in their sorrow; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to the table where your saints feast forever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever. Amen."

"Amen," they say very quietly, then for many seconds nothing.

"Thank you," Michelle says.

"You're very welcome. So. What do you do now?"

"We're going back to the Safe Apartment," James says, "and we're not setting foot in NCIS for the next two weeks."

"Thank you," Michelle repeats, quickly hugging her. When they part, Siobhan reads in James' eyes that he wants to do so as well but, after ten indecisions, he extends his hand. She takes it but

"Come _on_!" Michelle says. "One freebie," she pushes him, grinning. "You get to hug _one_ beautiful woman."

Nevertheless, it's the most chaste, self-conscious hug she's received in months.

xxx

Director Jennifer Shepherd stares at the three men before her; her Deputy SAIC, an FBI Senior Agent of too frequent acquaintance and the considerably less often seen but still notable Metro Homicide Detective Lieutenant. "Four?" The Stephens / Palmer case had been sufficiently outré as a single.

"Maybe five or six by now if the perp's keeping a schedule," Gibbs says.

"Thank you very much. How did four - or more," she says with a glare at the too innocent looking Gibbs, "people get blown up and no one hears about it?"

"You still wouldn't if the first one hadn't been in your agents' apartment," Fornell points out.

"If I may, madam Director," Carpenter says, endeavoring to avoid an explosion here.

"So long as you never call me 'madam director' again."

"Yes... Director. Anyway, my Chiefs and the FBI's decided to keep this secret until we had a sense of what was happening, and then it was to avoid a public panic. The first - second, rather - occasion was kept under wraps because a Unit rolled up within seconds of the detonation and the officers managed to contain the scene. The gag was in place before we had any idea of the scope of this problem, then no one was anxious to lift it."

"And what is the scope?"

"The scope is what brought us on, two now in DC, one each in Maryland and Virginia," Fornell says, "but we have no witnesses."

x

"We're going to need whatever information you have on those other three bombings."

"No can do, Director," Fornell says.

"We've already made good progress on the Stephens case, and cooperation will only result in more."

"They're already hopping mad at the Hoover Building because they picked up on NCIS' inquiry into bombs inside victims and blown open corpses."

"Yes, I can see where that would be upsetting," she grants, laying it on thick. "As upsetting as a young couple walking into their apartment to find it was to have been burglarized by said blown open corpse laid out on their bedroom floor."

"I sympathize, director, I really do."

She turns to Gibbs. "You've been awfully quiet."

"Just watching the match." He looks to Carpenter.

"Hey, if it were my decision, I'm happy for the help. I don't have a Forensic Scientist who hosted the Science Channel." The six part segment 'History of Forensics 1901 - 2000' had been one of Abby Sciuto's proudest accomplishments. "I'm a good Indian, I follow my Chiefs."

"See what you can do about cooperation."

"Now wait a minute!" Fornell sees his days of Metro's cooperation under FBI's lead vanishing.

"Give it up, Tobias," Gibbs advises. "It's inevitable."

xxx

After numerous and extended phone calls that tax the limits of the Investigators' patience, the issue goes to a three way conference in MTAC. The result is a five way ad hoc cooperation between three Police and the two Civilian Agencies. The question of leadership then becomes a more contentious point than that of cooperation.

The final resolution is for joint leadership centered in DC and only because two incidents occurred there and local Police resources in Maryland and Virginia are too strained to allow Detective teams to come to work on an already well staffed unit when there are local matters demanding their attentions. The arrangements are left the principals on the scene to define what that 'Cooperation' means, hopefully to the satisfaction of all five interested superiors.

This truce and sharing of information and authority does buy Carpenter and Fornell access to Abby's lab under Gibbs' escort.

xx

"Wow, Cornibbs!" she exclaims when she sees them.

Carpenter looks to Fornell. "I prefer Cornell."

"Me too. Tell us what you've got, Abby."

She looks to Gibbs, mistrusting this order - as though anyone other than the Silver Fox or the Director can give her an order - but he nods.

"So, working together I see. A three pronged attack."

"For now."

"Tobias, really."

"She got Shepherd's office and MTAC bugged?"

"Don't need to. _I _am the Mysterious of the Dark. See all, hear all–"

"Tell all."

"Tell all." But she still confirms this with Gibbs before opening her Secret Vault, a.k.a. her computer, the images from which she directs to the plasma screen mounted on the other side of the freestanding console.

"Other than Michelle's and Jimmy's on the inside and Alan Stephens' on the outside there were no fingerprints on the bedroom window." The image of the window is replaced by the bloody canvas bag laying on the white shah carpet close to the corpse. "I found a lot of trace material in and on the outside of the bag. I'm still analyzing thirty seven separate particles and I'm nowhere close to figuring out where he was immediately prior to the break-in."

"I can give you a list of his usual haunts," Carpenter says.

"Thanks, got 'em. Stephens was a creature of habit, all of them bad. Tony says he was so uninspired that you usually waited at his hideouts until he got there."

"I usually love the stupid ones," the detective says, "but this guy was in a class of his own."

"Busted for Stupidity, huh?"

"You got it."

x

Sammy Sky steps through the back door. "_Hi_, Abby!" she greets her roommate with her usual elation, "Ducky's back and he and Maura sent thi–" Her voice vanishes as she sees the three visitors, though it's one presence that mutes her.

"Yes, I _know_! I'm going to run down and see the Duck man as soon as we're finished," she tells her roommate. "The slave driver has kept me chained up down here," she frowns a disappointed accusation at the petite blonde, "but _you_ should not hold a grudge."

"I'll hold any grudge I like."

"It'll give you wrinkles. Laugh lines are better." Those the younger woman will have in abundance. "Besides, it's because of him that you moved in, so maybe you could thank him,"

She looks at the tall men and everyone knows they're not going to hear those words.

"Hello, Miss Sky," Carpenter says, but Sammy turns away.

"Hello." Her greeting is subdued, but for her it's positively morose.

"No hard feelings?" he asks, not sure why, for the woman is very obviously unwilling to forgive and forget. Still, he'll keep trying. Granted she does have a reason not to like him, but he's used to perps having that attitude and tries to keep people who don't - or no longer - fit into that category from having it.

"You two have a history?" Fornell asks, which makes her whirl, and though she addresses the Agent her pale blue eyes flare at the tall detective.

"I _don't_ like the way he uses handcuffs."

x

'Wait a sec,' Tobias thinks. 'I heard about Sky and her memberships in 'Taiwan On' and 'Sodom and Gomorrah'. Did a Session turn bad that I shouldn't even be hearing about?'

It's the FBI Agent's expression that forces Carpenter to explain. "A few months ago I arrested Miss Sky on suspicion of murder." He turns back to her, still trying for at least a shadow of amity. "I'm glad to see you were proven innocent."

"No she wasn't."

"_ABBY_!"

"Well, Gibbs found the culprit and you were set free."

"Could've told it that way."

"It wasn't as much fun."

"Be-yatch." But that incident had led to the loss of her apartment and her moving in with Abby, and not once had she ever thought of questioning that decision - until now.

"Abby, the report," Gibbs presses, having no time for a history lesson when there's a case in their hands.

"Oh, yes." She extends her hand expectantly. "Sammy, the report."

"Nope, the new evidence." She hands Abby a sealed container suitable for pills, in which rests what resembles a rounded arrowhead with spike, altogether three inches long and an inch thick at the tapered head but the body of the shaft is a quarter inch thick. "We pried this out of Stephens' left ilium."

"You mean his pelvis?" Carpenter asks. The look she turns up to him is not friendly.

"Pelvis is the collective term, suitable for lay_men_. It's made up of the left and right ilium."

"What is it?" Fornell asks, preferring to leave this charged confrontation.

"What I've been waiting for," Abby says, holding the container to the overhead light, "the missing link that proves my theory. This is part of something bigger, see where it broke off at this end? Probably broke in the explosion, and I have most of the rest of it as a pulverized titanium shaft, though I still need more of the detonator and you'll probably find it," she tells Sammy, "or I will when I get through sifting through the Crime Scene evidence. Unless I miss my guess, and I rarely do, this is your murder weapon. Think of it as a very mini harpoon or arrow with a round head."

"Similar things were found in the other victims," Fornell says. "They were identified as shrapnel."

"Shrapnel?" Abby turns to her silver fox. "Gibbs, may I?"

"No."

"Why should you have all the fun?" she grouses. He doesn't answer.

"What?" Fornell asks.

"Saved you from a headache, Tobias."

"Abby, please."

"The harpoon's not shrapnel, it's the delivery system. You're not looking for a bomb implanted into victims; you're looking for a stinger."


	9. Sharing

Chapter Nine  
Sharing

Gibbs turns on Fornell, his glare deadly. "Your people didn't think this was shrapnel."

"Okay," Carpenter intercedes, "the fact is we're waiting on several of the autopsies. Since your Doctor Mallard took _our_ Doctor Hampton to Scotland and Dr. Early is still on Leave, things have been backed up. The one autopsy we have isn't finished." Gibbs gives him his 'tell me another 'cause I don't believe that one' look. "You think there's only one case running? You're lucky to have a Pathologist on site."

"We have three."

"Thank you," Sammy says.

"Share."

"I'll think about it - if you do."

"Don't I get a say in this?" Sammy asks.

"No."

"Okay. I probably wouldn't like working for the city anyhow."

Gibbs tunes out the temp. "Okay, what've you got?"

"Similar things were found in the first two victims," Fornell says, "but in those cases there was more damage. You had more bone shielding soft tissue, the perp got in deeper with the other bombs, though how he did it was a mystery."

"What about the victims? Why were they chosen."

"The only thing we found in common," Fornell says, "is that every one of them, yours included, had been tried on the days before they died for some offense or other and had gotten off. It usually happened in early morning or late evening. Since there's no Court on Sunday we figured yours was a two-for from Saturday. We managed to float explanations for the killings with the Press, none of which were similar. When we realized the Court connection we started watching every perp that beat a rap but throwing in Maryland and Virginia there are so many of them and once a new one comes up it requires another agent. We're spread too thin over two States plus DC."

"Can I do it now, Gibbs?" Abby appeals again.

"No." He comes virtually nose to nose with Fornell. "I will. When were you going to let us in on that detail?"

"Come on, Gibbs, sharing information, that's not what we do."

"Even with your partners?"

"I had to follow orders."

"Your orders are–"

"Share what we have to. Now."

x

The thing that aggravates Gibbs is that this is exactly how the order had come down. "Okay, so your bosses still don't like to play nice. Why?"

"Gibbs, that hurts."

"Not as much as if I let Abby loose. They don't want a bunch of cowboys sharing the credit?" He's had to deal with that attitude on far too many occasions.

"NCIS is inconsequential. They don't care if you're on board or how. But something this big, Homeland is going to be all over it if they learn about it, and they can take it away from all of us." Gibbs gives him another 'tell me a new one 'cause I don't believe this one.' "Come on, Gibbs, private drone owner making private citizens explode? How much more terror can you ask for?"

"The kind ZNN covers."

But since the lockdown there has been none of that and the problem with Fornell's conclusion is that he's right. "So the 'big boys' are squabbling again." Both he and Fornell know that, despite FBI's preferences, Thomas Morrow, past NCIS Director and current Homeland Deputy Director, will eventually learn of this, even if through none of them.

"Not again, my friend. They never stop."

"Okay, I don't care who gets credit for this, but we three put our cards on the table."

"Agreed."

"So," Abby steps in, annoyed at both the up-play and having been disregarded through all this renegotiating, "what are you holding?"

x

"Peter Calienti was the first one we knew about, but now we have to consider him Number Two-"

"Always did," Carpenter says. Abby smiles at him and shares a 'high five' and even Sammy is a little inclined to give him a point. Since she'd come in annoyed at him, this is a considerable improvement.

"Anyway, the Metro Unit half a block away saw his back explode, blood and gore all over the street. But they didn't see anyone around him, which led to them to suspect the bomb was inside his jacket. Later detail showed it was inside him, everything blew out."

"Same with Stephens," Abby says. "I found explosive residue inside his tee shirt, or rather in the edges of the hole around his shirt."

"Stephens had been busted for ADW, Grand Theft Auto, a dozen other things," Gibbs says. "What's Calienti's story?"

"He had a dozen arrests, mostly 'jacking," Carpenter says. "He boosted cars, they'd turn up in chop shops. Problem was, one chop shop gets shut down and we round up those guys, within a week they're bailed out and hard at work in a new one somewhere else. There's a guy at the top who never comes down, but once we put any of them away they're bailed out within a day."

"Who does it?"

"You'll like this. Messengers bring cash to Bail Bondsmen as well as Notarized collateral, all papers signed and above board, then the Bondsmen complete the process. Legitimate Messenger Services; someone walks in with an envelope and pays the fee in cash for delivery, again all above board. More often than not the guy who hires the Messenger Service is one of those self-employed 'Errand-for-Fee' guys. If we find _that_ guy, we can't charge him with anything other than hiring a Messenger and he doesn't have a clue that pans out. If we do follow the trail back it's to a vacant apartment the for-fee guy never saw the inside of. He'd knock, the client would come out and the arrangement was done in the hallway.

"Now the day Calienti was supposed to be tried his Lawyer got a key piece of evidence excluded and everything went against the ADA. That was how he was on the street when he blew up the following day."

x

And so it goes. The other two out-of-District victims had criminal records for a list of Charges that ran the entire range of the lawless. No one else had any connection to Calienti or his easy 'get out of jail free' system, yet all were recent releases because, for one reason or another, their Court cases went in their favor. One had a very good lawyer who knew the finer techniques of negotiation, in the other case a witness couldn't be located when trial date came and the Defense managed to push that the defendant had been held too long for the Prosecution to be granted a new postponement when they didn't take due steps to ensure the witness' presence.

But in no case was there any connection that could be found from one perp to another.

Further, there were no connections between Lawyers, Judges, Court Clerks, Crime Reporters, nothing. The cases were too distant from one another.

The sole common denominator will be the guy who blew them up.

xx

When Gibbs leads his extended team into the bullpen, Sky having returned to Autopsy, he brings his regular assistants up to date.

"DiNozzo, check the Security records from the Court houses. Metro and FBI have been looking for an official link; I think it's someone under the radar; witness, spectator, whoever. Find him."

"Piece of cake, boss."

Gibbs knows better. It'll take more than one man to review the entrance videos of several Court buildings in three jurisdictions and eliminate the people who belong in each to find one common person. Shortly he'll arrange a whole phalanx of Agents, but for now it's DiNozzo. Maybe he'll even find the answer in a long forgotten plot twist in a 1920's Film Noir Gumshoe Flick.

"McGee, the bombs were put into the perps by some kind of mini arrow. We're looking for a sniper. Check video surveillance. Fornell and Carpenter will be happy to give you everything they have."

"No, we won't," Fornell says, making Gibbs turn on him. "Because we can't. All these took place on side streets away from main drags or where there wasn't any coverage."

Gibbs returns his attention to his agent. "Call NASA. Abby has enough friends there to start a Colony. Ziva, coordinate with Abby, what kind of bombs were they beyond C4? How'd the perp get them?" He turns to Palmer's desk, recalls too late it's empty by his order, so he completes the turn to Fornell and Carpenter.

"Gibbs," Fornell says, "you think your people can find something the Bureau," he glances at Carpenter as though reluctantly including him, "or Metro missed?"

"We'd better. Because if this bastard's on schedule, there's already another victim."

xxx

An hour after Carpenter returned to his own duties and Fornell to the Hoover Building where he can work more efficiently in his home turf, the agents are no further along on their researches when the elevator bell heralds an excited summons. "Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs!" Ziva's ringing phone is nearly drowned out and the final summons is made from directly in front of his desk.

"What is it, Abby?"

The woman's rush had been so enthusiastic that her left pigtail has been shaken loose. She wears a black vest over black blouse and a black skirt that threatens to cause her arrest or, since her back is to DiNozzo, a considerably worse fate. "I have something. Propellant traces. That fits with the spike Maura and Ducky and Sammy found. Stephens was definitely shot with the bomb, it was never implanted in him."

"That's good work, Abs. What shot him?"

"Whatever it was was short range. I haven't narrowed it down yet, could be any of three. But I calculated the blast yield and there couldn't have been more than four ounces of C4 in the whatever was used to force it under the skin."

"So a short range, low power weapon."

"Putting it under the soft tissue of the body, you don't need a lot to make a fatal hole. An M-80 would be more than enough. It injured and killed enough kids on Fourths of Julys down through the years."

"But what about getting it there?" Tony challenges. "The few witnesses there were said they saw no one."

"That is not true," Ziva says as she hangs up her phone. "Lieutenant Carpenter on One."

Gibbs pushes the flashing button on his phone. "What's up, Carp?"

"You people lead charmed lives, that's all I can say. William Mayfair exploded in Hillcrest less than a half hour ago, and this time there's a witness. His wife Amber is Navy, so come and get it."

xxx

To approach the Crime Scene is one matter, to enter it quite another. The site is a corner house in suburban Hillcrest, the property completely enclosed by a short white 'hitching post' fence.

The intersection is impassable for the seven Patrol cars plus Command station wagon, two Ambulances from different hospitals, three Fire units plus two Emergency Rescue squads, the result of a shower of 911 calls. Most of the superfluous units now strive to create a path through more than three hundred gawking neighbors who have flowed off the sidewalks so they may depart.

Seven News vans from everywhere from ABC to ZNN won't go anywhere until the reporters' voracious hungers are satisfied.

"Looks like the blackout's well lit," DiNozzo gripes. It's situations like this that make him an avid supporter of Rule Number 43.

The moment that Gibbs' Hemi leads the MCR and the ME trucks into the back of the mob of curious neighbors and the agents and pathologists get out, eleven reporters, armed with recorders, cameras and microphones surround them and each reporter calls questions into such a cacophony that no one could answer even if so inclined. The other deaths had occurred on side streets or out of the way locations, so as far as the reporters think, this - whatever it is - is the only incident.

x

The heat that slammed them as they emerged from car and trucks makes the Agents and Doctors want to get back into their vehicles. Their efforts to push their way wordlessly through the crowd as four police officers struggle to clear a path for them to the open and guarded hitching post gate is equal parts getting to the Crime Scene and simply wanting to get into the likely much cooler house. At the door Gibbs and his team, together with Mallard, Isles and Sky, are hustled inside. The first familiar face they see in the still too crowded living room is Fornell's.

"This is your idea of a blackout?" Gibbs asks after he signs the Scene Log and passes the clipboard to DiNozzo. Most of the Metro Police work the scene but the living room is still so crowded with officers not yet authorized to depart that their main concerns are to keep out of each other's ways. As the house is air conditioned, no one appears desperate to reach the outside.

"Not ours," the Senior Agent says, annoyance he's likely been nursing for a while finding vent. "Mrs, or rather Ensign, Amber Mayfair raised holy hell when her husband William exploded while she was out back gardening. 911 reported eleven calls from neighbors with as many dispatchers having different reasons to dispatch everyone short of the dog catcher." He walks to a door to the right. "Body's in the bedroom," he says, pointing to a guarded door to the left. "Come hear her story."

Ducky leads Isles and Sky to the bedroom door across the living room while the agents follow Fornell.

x

In contrast to the full living room the kitchen, which also faces the front of the house, has only three people within; Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter, a uniformed Police Woman and a devastated woman collapsed into a chair. She appears to be about forty and to have gained ten years in the past hour. Her blonde hair is no longer well secured by a blue scrunchy and she wears jeans covered at the knees with garden dirt, a gray shirt not significantly neater and an air of utter misery battered by shock.

Gibbs steps to her, kneels on his right knee and still isn't down low enough to be in her eye line. "Ensign Mayfair?" He has his IDs ready and waits until she can raise her swollen eyes high enough to see him. "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS." He gives her a few seconds to absorb this as he puts away his folder, waits until she meets his eyes and he can see that he has her attention. "Can you tell us what happened here?"

She shakes her head but he holds the silence until she can fill it with words. "I was gardening - in the back. I heard a sound - getting closer. I... I looked up, there was this thing, like a toy helicopter but with four propellers, coming down the side of our house. It hovered at the back window. It went... it went _pfffit_ and a second later... a second later there was an explosion in the bedroom. I looked in the window and–." She tries to say more, tries to force the words through locked mouth frozen open, then breaks, sobbing.

The weeping builds, and the more she cries the deeper she sinks into hysterics. When Gibbs looks up Carpenter signals him to follow. The Detective leads the five agents into the corner of the kitchen near the door, leaves the weeping woman to whatever aid the policewoman can offer as he tells them quietly what he'd gleaned from the woman's previous interviews. "The thing was white, hovered on four propellers. It fired and then ascended straight up, high enough to almost be lost against the white clouds, then headed east by northeast."

"A drone." That answers so many more questions than a sniper would, starting with why the Police unit that reported the second explosion didn't report the drone. By the time the explosion drew their attention, the drone had already gone high up and far away.

"A radio remote control drone," Carpenter confirms, "available in at least forty hobby shops within the District."


	10. Drone

Chapter Ten  
Drone

The NCIS Agents and FBI Senior Agent Fornell still in a quiet huddle with Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter in the kitchen's corner, Gibbs looks to Ziva and tries to ignore the weeping widow behind him. "When we get back compile a list of everyplace in the bi-State area where you can buy a drone and call them. Who bought a drone in the past six months?"

"Personal remote control drones have become popular with more than drug runners and terrorists."

"Try to keep tonight's list down to five hundred."

"Yes, boss."

"McGee, how do you work those things?"

"A control box, a fairly small unit."

"Like the doodad you built to take over Powell's jet pack."

"Yes."

"Can you do it again?"

"First I use a frequency scanner, then–" He halts at Gibbs' glare. "Yes."

"How close would the guy flying it have to be?"

"About five hundred feet, give or take, but he has to be using it when I scan for the signal."

"And then?"

"I'll be able to control it. Most units might hold a lightweight camera, this sounds like a bigger than average one since it also has to mount a gun capable of firing what Abby says it did."

"Beyond that?" A thousand foot diameter circle, a fifth of a mile, covers too much territory.

"If the drone gets out of range of its controller it will follow its last command until it runs out of power. How long depends upon the unit. Could take hours."

x

They already know the drone rose straight up, then set a course east by northeast. If it headed toward its controller, that extends the distance it could travel before it had to be brought down or be lost. "I want to know the maximum distance an operator could be and still keep control. Learn everything there is to learn about this thing. I'll interview the widow." He looks to see where the seated woman sobs inconsolably. "When she calms down.

"David, you and DiNozzo hunt up the neighbors. Shouldn't be too hard to find them." The multitude of Emergency Vehicles crammed into the intersection when they'd arrived had drawn a crowd that had been too large before the agents entered and probably now packs an acre of land.

Ensign Amber Mayfair winds down with the assistance of the uniformed woman before her. He'll come back when she's able to talk. In the meantime he'll leave Jeffrey Carpenter to gather more information they'll share later. He wants to hear what Ducky and his team have learned.

xx

Crossing the living room, now considerably less crowded, he leads Fornell into the bedroom in the rear of the house. He can only partially ope the door when it's blocked half open and ehen he looks in the reason for their presence is too obvious.

William Mayfair lays upon what's left of his back, his head so close to the door that Sammy Sky, obviously positioned for the purpose, caught the door when it swung less than half open and the Agents must enter in single file along the wall.

Mayfair, at first look, is almost split in half, his upper body extends down to the abdomen and resumes at the hips. His body is not separated but his spinal column is all that holds it together. The middle of the body paints the ceiling, far wall and top half of the open window, left and right walls and floor from beyond the middle of the fifteen foot room.

Donald Mallard and Maura Isles crouch on the left and right sides of the body.

"What can you tell us, Duck?" Both Mallard and the woman are Chief Medical Examiners of their respective jurisdictions but even after a month he still hasn't adjusted to the woman he can see only as Kate Todd's honey blonde clone.

"William Mayfair was apparently standing closer to the window, judging by the blood spatter, though I cannot yet say how close. The explosive force landed him back here."

"The hole," Isles says, "and I resist calling it a wound, extends from an inch above his free floating rib, the lowest of the ribs, to his pelvis."

"Not ilium?" he asks with a glance at Sky who protects the door.

Isles looks up to him; her eyes say she's not in the loop, "Not collectively."

"The wound is eleven and one quarter inches wide by nine point eight inches high and eight point six inches deep," Ducky says. "I expect our Miss Sciuto can tell you how much explosive was used."

"He was shot through the window by a drone hovering right outside. I think Stevens' is the same story."

"Then I do not envy you your investigation. No fingerprints, no footprints, nearly silent yet unlimitedly mobile, and the operator need not be anywhere in the vicinity."

xx

When Gibbs returns to the kitchen where Amber Mayfair sits with plainclothes Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter and the uniformed Metro Policewoman, everyone else has gone to interview the crowd of curious neighbors. Even though no one may draw close, human nature prevents them from leaving until after the last of the official vehicles depart, so those who stay seeking answers will receive questions instead.

"Ensign Mayfair?" She looks up at him as the policewoman steps back, gives them room but doesn't leave her sight. She no longer weeps hysterically but hovers on the border between cried-out calm and shock. He has to work, while learning as much as he can, to prevent her from crossing over.

He takes out his ID folder and uses his 'I'm a friend' tone. "Special Agent Gibbs." He gives her a moment to absorb this, watches her gather her mind back into the moment. They'd been through the introductions, will do it again if necessary. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"I was... I was gardening, in the back." She indicates with a vague wave her dirt covered jeans and grey shirt. This room, to the side of the living room, faces the front of the house, the bedroom and bath are in the back.

"What happened?"

"I heard something, I- I can't even describe it. It was like a buzz flutter whirr motor kind of thing. I looked up, there was this white _thing_ hovering outside our bedroom window. I heard a sound, like _pffft_, it shot straight up and there was an explosion, a horrific explosion like an eight inch shell exploding. I ran to the window and Bill–"

There is a line beyond which one can no longer cry, and where the horror is beyond retelling and Amber Mayfair, straining to speak, to force words past a mouth that won't move, has crossed that line.

Gibbs has no doubt that the explosion, even in the enclosed space, wasn't as loud as she'd described it - his team will settle that - but it's the way Mayfair will always remember it.

x

"Ensign, we know that people who have been in Court recently are being targeted." At her sudden hope, he tells her that "We're narrowing down a suspect list. Was your husband in Court recently?"

She nods sharply.

"He... got into a fight... with one of the neighbors, back while I was deployed. Guy sued us for assault, damages. The Hearing was yesterday. The judge said Guy didn't prove his case. Dismissed it." Suddenly she's at his throat. "Did he do it? Did Guy kill my Bill!"

Gibbs manages to press her back to the chair, breaking Rule Number 46 to 'never touch a crying woman', but he signals the Policewoman who'd striven to keep Mayfair calm back in.

"We don't think so, but I do want to talk to him. Who is he?"

"Guy Sanders. He lives next door, number 638."

Gibbs expects that the man is in the crowd outside, but he'll talk to him when the mob disperses, not before. A next door neighbor who has an interest in this couple might have seen something.

xx

It takes much too long for that dispersal. The body has been prepared and transported to NCIS, the Emergency Vehicles have departed and the Police have to press the separation of the curious from the unchanging exterior of the house before Gibbs and his team step outside with the still bereaved widow, who is placed in Ziva's discomforted care. Gibbs and DiNozzo turn their attention to number 638.

In the time it takes them to traverse one walkway to the sidewalk, cross to the next property and start up the flagstones the blue door opens and a middle aged man, wearing tee shirt and jeans, steps out into the afternoon furnace and closes the door quite firmly behind him.

"Guy Sanders?" Gibbs asks.

"That's far enough." They've come about two thirds of the way to the door, yet at this moment have no reason not to halt. "Who wants to know?"

The dexterous display of shield and IDs has long ago become automatic. They watch hands and feet and face as Gibbs completes the introduction.

"What do Navy cops have to do with this?"

"Widow's a Naval officer."

He shrugs, an 'I-don't-care' gesture. "What do you want?"

"Just to ask a few questions."

"I didn't do anything, I don't know anything, I'm not saying anything. That should about cover it."

"You're not a suspect, Mr. Sanders." He hopes this is true, but they'll come back if he's wrong. However, he'd prefer to discuss this at a range of less than 10 feet with very likely too many curious neighbors. They may have gone home, but homes have open windows in the humid July heat. "We want to ask if you saw or heard anything today."

"Didn't see anything. Didn't hear anything. Now we're done. Goodbye."

"Just one more thing."

"What, Falk?"

Tony grins. "That's good. Peter Falk. Columbo." He turns to and sees he's getting nowhere with Gibbs. "'Just one more thing'," he says in an atrocious gravelly imitation.

The glare makes it very clear he should try no more.

x

"You had a fight with Mr. Mayfair," Gibbs asks when he has his deputy back on the job.

"So? I didn't kill him."

"Care to tell us what it was about?" They watch him consider more stonewalling, but then decide the issue is a matter of record. "Blasts his stereo every night while the neighborhood's trying to sleep. I went to talk him into not being a jerk. We mixed it up on the lawn. You want more, call my Lawyer." He turns and reenters the house, snaps the bolt loudly enough to be heard at the sidewalk.

Gibbs and DiNozzo return to the yellow and black Hemi, now the only remaining 'official' vehicle on the sparsely parked street, but though the younger man walks around the car Gibbs pauses, hand on the roof.

"It doesn't fit."

"What doesn't?"

"The other bombings: ADW, Grand Theft, Burglary, Drugs, the whole list across the board, then Disturbing the Peace and a dust-up on the lawn?"

"Maybe it was a slow day for acquittals?"

"Try again. When we get back, tell me what Mayfair's been doing and narrow down that list."

Tony doesn't admit he hasn't started it yet.

xxx

"Hey, McGiga, I need a favor."

"What is it, Tony?" Gibbs and Ziva are away from their desks, Ziva with Ensign Mayfair in the Conference Room and Gibbs has gone to consult with Abby, thence to Autopsy, so he's sure of two things: it involves computers and it's going to be expensive, either in money or head slaps, probably both.

"Gibbs wants me to review the Security tapes of all the Court Houses where our vics were tried, to see if there's a common person."

"And you need some warrants. No problem." Of course there'll be a problem, and he's certain this isn't it simply because it isn't a problem. Normally Warrant Affidavits fall to Michelle as the team's Lawyer, but she won't be back on duty until the 30th and it's actually a Probie Duty, last one aboard gets the drudge jobs until he or she is lucky enough to pass them on. But with a five person team, a record for NCIS not met since the NIS days of the 'Fed Five', this isn't likely except in the most unpleasant of events. Besides, anyone could do this, including the scheming Agent.

Not everyone, however, can do whatever DiNozzo has in mind.

x

"No, I won't do the main entrances for five buildings to see if I can find a match out of four thousand people, especially when the most common matches are going to be Lawyers."

"Rule number 13 with a vengeance."

Tony leaves his desk, comes across to figuratively trap him within the cubicle. "I need the in-room footage of the courtrooms where these five guys had their cases."

"Good luck. Main entrance cameras are overt; everyone knows they're being filmed anyway so only a few hotheads quibble. The Courtroom cameras that point toward the viewers are hidden, pinhole units with fiber optic feeds and if you ask for them they'll probably deny the cameras exist."

"Which is why I need you to work your magic."

"Michelle's the Witch, Tony."

"Palmer's also got a big mouth. She'd rat herself out to Gibbs the moment he walked into the room, if she could even do this."

"Maybe in the old days, not now." Since this had become a team of five, more often than not Tony and Ziva are partnered in the field while he's partnered with Michelle, so he feels obligated to stand up for her.

"Either way, I need you to back door those records."

"Hack into the upper level Security of at least five Court rooms so you can save yourself a couple hundred hours of surveillance footage? Risk having the DOJ come down on us, to say nothing of Gibbs? What possible incentive could you offer for that?"

Tony leans in, lowers his voice and gives Tim the one incentive he can never turn down. "This guy's killing one 'not guilty' guy a day. How many more days are in a couple hundred hours?"


	11. If I Were A Bell

Chapter Eleven  
If I Were A Bell

At 1500 Gibbs walks into the Forensics Lab, hoping to get from Abby things he hasn't gotten from the most recent widow or his team: Answers.

The first four hits by their drone assassin had been against people with long records of serious crimes. The fifth, the one firmly within their jurisdiction as a dependent, had been hauled into Court for fighting because he plays his stereo too loudly, something Abby can empathize with. He feels for a moment like the next door neighbor as he walks in through the back door and immediately turns down her radio on the shelf just within the doorway. He's certain it had been drawing its breath, ready to pulverize his right eardrum.

"Gibbs, I can't get the full effect when it's down that low."

He'd been generous, had only knocked it to half cacophonous. "You need to get your ears checked."

"It's not a matter of hearing, it's the absorption of and immersion in the full auditory effects."

"You could use a few less effects."

"I could also use a few less pounds."

x

She opens her white lab coat in display. Her black and red miniskirt is okay but the black tee shirt presses her so tightly it could be arrested for assault. But he's certain her problem isn't her weight, it's her choice of a tee shirt a size too small. He wonders if she should be arrested the first time she steps out of the lab, but he's afraid to mention handcuffs to her before being sure her roommate hasn't had too much of an influence on her.

"Tell me, Gibbs, do you think I should go on a diet?"

"You're asking a question I never answer."

"Come on, Gibbs, I promise I won't get mad."

"Then I know a fast way to get rid of 109 pounds."

She actually recoils. "Gibbs, that's _cruel_. And I'm not going to ask how you hit her weight so exactly."

"Thought you said you wouldn't get mad."

"I meant on me."

"Still a question I don't answer. I have some questions, though."

"About Mayfair? I'm still waiting for Sammy to bring up the first of the evidence."

"Three MEs down there, you'd think they'd be more efficient."

x

She slaps the table. "Gibbs, have I told you lately how cruel you're getting?"

He steps up to her and his voice drops with controlled anger. Upstairs he raises it, never with her. "Burglar hits my people who are days away from Separation, probably Divorce; explodes and adds more stress than they need. I have to send them both to Kenilworth where I wouldn't send an ex-wife because they can't work their own case. Five people the law says are 'Not Guilty' get murdered which means five families shattered and there's no prints or witnesses from a hovercraft, and my team - the ones I have left - tell me there could be hundreds or even thousands of those things out there. Cruel is just getting warmed up."

Abby flings her arms about him in a hug she doesn't intend to release until she can cheer him up, no matter how long that might take.

xxx

At 1520 when he walks into Autopsy, fully staffed now with 2/3 the wrong staff, his mood is little improved. Abby had nothing, but how can she have much new to tell him about a weapon that hovers and whose operator could be blocks away in any direction?

"What have you got, Duck?"

"A very nice tan, memories that will last a lifetime - which at my age is not too impressive, I will grant - and, unfortunately, a man lacking a significant portion of his torso."

"Died the same way as the others?"

"So it would seem."

"Do you have anything to send up to Abby?"

"Yes, and thank you for noticing, if parenthetically, that you and I are not alone." Rather than driving the point too heavily, he turns to his assistant and holds out to her an already stocked tray of sealed specimen containers. "Would you please bring this up to Abby? Then you may take a twenty minute break; we've much to do this evening so we shall be putting in some late hours."

"Sure thing, Doctor Duck." She slips her blue booties off her pink cross tied - _Good Lord_ \- ballet slippers and throws them into the garbage bin at the head of the silver table, takes the tray and, as she passes, says "Bye, Agent Gibbs."

"Bye, Chicky." This halts her.

"Awwww, you remembered. Thank you." Before he can stop her she gives him a one armed hug, balancing the tray in her other hand, then is gone.

x

"My day for hugs."

"I'll say 'goodbye' too, Agent Gibbs," Maura Isles announces. At his surprised look she clarifies "Not immediately, when we finish for the day, but since that will be late I'd appreciate it if you would convey my farewells to everyone else."

She reads his expression, incorrectly.

"I know you don't like me, Agent Gibbs, but we did make a good team. I hope that–"

"Stop."

When she does and he has a moment to compose his thoughts "I never disliked you, Doctor. You're an excellent ME, and if I couldn't get past a coincidental resemblance, that's on me." He extends his hand. "I always say apologies are a sign of weakness, and I won't insult you by saying I enjoyed having you around this month, but we did work well together."

She takes his hand. "Our collaboration has been an interesting experience for both of us."

"That it has. Luck."

"Happiness, Agent Gibbs."

"Jethro."

"Maura."

"Goodbye."

xxx

Abby, clad in white lab coat to reflect the hot sunlight away from black tee shirt and black and red miniskirt, and Sammy in blue short sleeved scrubs and far from coordinated footwear, stand on the front lawn to the side and a few feet out from the main entrance. There they enjoy the late afternoon sun and the scent of freshly mown grass during their nearly expired break. It's nearly change of shift, Alpha to Beta, but neither of them have a prospect of leaving.

Naturally Abby won't leave until her work is done and, considering Gibbs' mood and the first victims of this scheme, she's extra motivated to find something.

Sammy, with the number of blown corpses for Ducky, Maura and herself to deal with, considers herself lucky to snatch this twenty minute juice break.

But break time over, they're about to seek retreat from the hot summer sun for their subterranean workstations - half subterranean for Abby - when Tina Larsen and Lisa DuBois arrive to start their evenings. With Janet Levy on Disability Leave - she's still in Monroe University Hospital - DuBois and Kevin Lamb have been switched to Beta shift and Rosa Arnell's team have assumed the more demanding Alpha.

"Hi, girls," Abby greets them.

"How's everything going?" Tina asks as she catches her blonde hair blown into her face and tucks it back.

"Ducky's back," Sammy announces, thrilled to have the man with her again.

"I heard," Lisa says. "Is he downstairs?"

"Yeppers."

"Think I'll go down before he leaves."

"That won't be soon," Sammy assures her. "We just brought in a second exploded body today and Agent Gibbs wants his answers yesterday."

"So when is that new?"

x

Conversation is undirected for a bit, but Abby subtlety checks Sammy's wristwatch because she'd only intended her friend's twenty minutes away from her own work and they're already into overtime when Sammy asks Lisa "How's Janet?"

"She's getting better. She's been moved from Intensive Care to a room so that's something. When she gets out - eventually - she'll stay with her parents until she _is_ better; no way can she fend for herself."

Levy had been attacked in her apartment house, suffered severe injuries in a horrendous beating and 'sexual assault', a detestable euphemism for their friend being beaten senseless, raped and sodomized and beaten further to near death.

She's spent so long in Intensive Care with too many horrific injuries. Her jaw is wired shut, her head is swathed in gauze because she'd needed surgery for a skull fracture and her face is severely – Lisa saw some of the initial photos and will reveal none of those details.

Her broken jaw and fractured eye socket are just two of her too many injuries covering her from head to hips.

"I'll tell her you asked," she promises when she can force away the memories well enough to maintain a level tone.

"Think she'll come back?" Abby asks. She misses her friend and is still angry about the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of a sneaking coward.

x

Lisa can only shrug. "They still haven't removed the wire holding her jaw together, she has to write what she wants to say left handed and drink all her meals that she doesn't get from the IVs. At least they're letting her have something by mouth even if it's like Ensures. The doctors still won't say definitely that she'll recover who knows what percent of her right hand's dexterity. Even if she wants to stay on, if she can't pass her Weapons Certification...

"As to staying, she says 'no', her parents say 'yes'. I'm praying for yes."

"I'd hate to see her quit," Tina says.

"It'd be so wrong," Sammy agrees.

"Kevin and I see her every day, but she's asked us not to push so we won't. I was amazed she stayed on when those _bastards_ drove her to suicide." Lisa still has nightmares of having walked into their office four months ago to find Jan with her Sig already in her mouth and her thumb on the trigger.

Her partner had only barely passed her Psych Evaluation to return to duty, that in itself had been a virtual miracle, but she had still remained 'Provisional' when she was attacked. "I think this'll be a case of 'we'll know when she knows'."

Tina's breath-long assessment of the assailant is one the three women heartily agree with.

x

"What's that guy doing?" Abby directs their attention to the large NCIS sign at the head of the walk. A man in his mid-20's stands on the other side of it and uses the flat topped sign to hold a large sketchbook over which he's bent and on which works quite intently.

"Checking Sammy out," Tina says.

"_What_? No _way_!"

"I've been watching him. Every few seconds he looks up, looks directly at you, then goes back to working on the pad." In the moments that they watch he does exactly that. "He's so focused on Sammy," she quips to the other two women, "we three could be in the Anacostia."

"How can you be so sure it's Sammy he's got the hots for?"

"_AB-BY_!"

No one points out her reversal. "Believe me, I _have_ been watching," Tina assures her, "not to mention I can practically smell his testosterone."

"Come _on_! He's not looking at me. Jan, you're in a miniskirt, for gosh sake, so are you Abby. Tina, your dress could cause traffic accidents."

"Thanks."

"Welcome. But I'm in scrubs."

Worse than in short sleeved scrubs; she's taken lately to wearing pink ballerina slippers rather than flats or sneakers under the booties she's obliged to wear in Autopsy.

The pink slippers are secured up her ankles by pink cross tied ribbons to catch the cuffs of her blue scrubs and are extravagantly bowed in front, but the bound scrubs bottom and top are matching blue. The pink ballet slippers are an indulgence that's fine for Autopsy where Maura has never minded and Ducky has said nothing - yet - and where the doctors work quite out of sight, but out here "I look ludicrous!"

"I know a couple of guys who think scrubs are sexy," Tina assures her. "And pink? No wonder his hormones are raging."

x

The man looks up again and as much as Sammy wants to deny it she can feel his eyes make the scrubs vanish. "How _rude_!" she exclaims at this invasion as he looks down again. "Girls, I have an idea. Come in closer, side by side.

Sammy is five two, so when the three women close ranks, backs to the sign, she's well screened and bends down to peer between Tina and Janet's waists.

This time, when the man looks up he scowls, shifts right and left but can't find her.

"I'll be a baboon's aunt, he _is_ checking me out."

"Your questionable parentage aside," Abby says, "how could you have doubted?"

When he looks down and returns to work at the pad again she straightens and says "Can you three stay here?"

She doesn't wait for an answer but hurries to her right, cuts across the cement walkway and makes a fast, long arc counter clockwise along the grass, leaving the women in a line facing the door.

Unfortunately, they're not alone as agents arrive and depart and several glance at them.

"Feeling a little silly, gals," Janet says.

"Give it a few more moments," Abby counters, able to peripherally see the younger woman's progress. She's completed a broad circle and approaches the man from behind.

x

The young man looks up and sighs in heavy aggravation. The women have not moved. Why the hell do they have to stand _there_?

"Hi," a woman's cheerful voice says from behind him, "would you like some coffee?"

He looks back over his shoulder, already answering the unexpected intruder. "Thanks but I don't drink cof– Oh _Shit_!" He jumps half out of his shoes, drops a pencil as his hand sweeps the cover of his sketchbook down.

"Neither do I. Nasty stuff," she tells him with a grin as she sees her helpful friends depart, "but I thought we should meet over something more than a pad."

"Oh Christ," he whispers but then rallies, seemingly more to avoid homicide. "Look, I'm sorry, I don't normally do this, but when I saw you, you looked so fantastic I couldn't help myself. I had to capture you on paper."

'Well,' she thinks, 'it beats bondage with lies for names.' She looks down at herself, then at him. "Fantastic?" 'Flattering no end but' "I'm in blue scrubs and pink ballet slippers."

"That's what attracted my attention."

'_Kinky._'

"I'm really sorry to intrude."

"Why do you assume I'm mad?" At a distance she had been, but up close...

"Well, I didn't exactly ask permission."

She giggles. "You'd be amazed what guys do to me without asking permission." 'When I'm tied up,' she finishes privately. She extends her hand. "I'm Sammy. Sammy Sky."

He takes her hand. "William Marsters."

"So William Marsters, do you often sketch girls in scrubs?"

"No. I must confess this is a first. Besides, I didn't do you in scrubs."

"_Really_?" He nods. "Can I see?" He starts to raise the cover but her hands flash out. "_Wait_!" He halts, fingers on the corner. "I gotta tell you, if this is a _nude_ thing you just blew more than you could possibly imagine."

Undaunted, he raises the cover.

Sammy's gasp is long and she feels her eyes open so widely she risks her orbs dropping out.

xxx

"Boss," DiNozzo calls across the bullpen as he hangs up his phone at 1647, "McKnight Hobbies on Columbia Heights reports that of all the sales of Drones over the past two months, eleven in all but they say they're seeing an upward trend, all but one was sold on credit cards. That one was cash."

"You and Ziva."

"I do not think so," the woman says, very thoroughly snagging Gibbs' attention.

"What was that, Da-veed?"

"I shall be busy in Virginia, where two shops in that interval have had purchases for drones that match Mayfair's description which have been paid for in cash."

He turns to McGee. "You gonna tell me you have cash sales too?"

"Not since you already know. Problem is, I have four in three different places in Maryland."

He looks back to Ziva. "Six in two shops."

Back to Tony. "Still only the one, but I can keep looking if you like."

"Look on the road. You and I will take that one."

Both Ziva and Tim are distressed at that. Ten sales to check out between them and two men on one? "Boss, do you really think that's–"

"First, second and fifth hits were in DC."

Gibbs and DiNozzo are gone in seconds and Tim, as he gathers his shield, weapon and other accouterments from his otherwise empty upper desk drawer, says to Ziva: "Makes sense. Not to _me_, but it makes sense."

"Let us be on our way, Corporal Agarn."

This gets his full, impressed attention. "_Hm_! Twenty points for the archaic pop culture reference, Zee."

"MeTV in a weak and sleepless moment."

xxx

Evening approaches with no diminishment in light or heat when, at 1758, the tiny bell attached to the door of McKnight Hobbies announces the entrance of Gibbs and DiNozzo. They turn their attentions to the blonde woman behind the sales counter to their left. Tony isn't sure how much customer traffic a shop given over to modeling sets, paints and hobbies of many types does, but he's willing to credit the woman and her painted on red tee shirt for most of it.

"May I help you?"

"You certainly may-" is as far as DiNozzo gets and he suspects he's said his last word here for Gibbs presents his credentials and wants to know:

"You've sold some of those drone thingies?"

"Drone _thingies_?"

'Thank God for Gibbspeak.' "Yes," DiNozzo picks up, "four propeller radio controlled drones, like Phantom, Sky View and Super Nova."

"Oh, yes."

"We're interested in ones big enough to carry both a camera and other things at the same time."

"Yes, we have several. Are you the one who called?"

"Yes, I am," he says, moving in for the thrill.

"You wanted to know about the one who paid cash."

"Not exclusively him, but I'm very interested in the unusual."

"I bet you are."

"Did you pull anything on your security cameras?" Gibbs asks, his tone as businesslike as DiNozzo's is not.

"Yes," she turns to a monitor tucked away on a left corner, her eyes saying to Tony 'come back later when you ditch your grandfather'.

The image is a still one, taken from the male employee's back of a man who, in the black and white shot, has light colored hair, is in his late 20's but is otherwise unremarkable. "This the guy you're looking for?"

DiNozzo snaps a couple of images with his cell phone held at different angles. "Can't be sure yet. You know him?"

"Haven't got a clue. What do you want him for?"

But it's Gibbs who tells her "Hovering in a 'No Flying Zone'."

xxx

Abby turns from Major Mass Spec at 1851 when the rapid beeps from the clear sliding door announce Gibbs' return. He rarely leaves before 2100 but on this case, as he'd stressed earlier, he's particularly motivated.

Only this time it's not Gibbs; blue scrubs clad Sammy Sky strolls in on a grin and a cloud, holding in her hand a long tube of white paper. "Hey, girlfriend," she says delightedly.

"Hey yourself. Last time I saw you you were hunting an intrusive stalker." 'And that was quite a while ago,' she finishes silently, glancing at the clock on the opposite wall.

Sammy's grin grows even wider - how can she do that without fracturing her cheekbones? - and she sets the tube before her on the table. "Well, I caught him and he's neither. His name's Bill Marsters and he's an Artist. He's in the Navy Yard because he was commissioned to do a portrait of the Yard Commander, some anniversary or something."

"You don't say." She knows all the details of that event and can see that her friend doesn't care a bit.

"He's twenty three, his birthday's sixteen days ahead of mine–"

"So he'll always be the older man."

"I like older men." Sammy will be twenty three on August 26. "He's originally from Dunsmuir, California and lives in Pleasant Plains. He studied Art at Howard U and is co-owner of a Gallery near Farragut North."

"Really."

"_Yeah_. They're doing an exhibition next month on Impressionistic paintings by women like Cassatt, Jansson and Perry and I told him we'd come down and have a look."

"You did?"

"Uh huh."

"_We_ will?"

"Of course. I figure someone who loves body art so much would like to see the real thing."

"Tou - _ché_. So, you really can't stand this guy, can you?"

x

"He's British German, his parents still live in Dunsmuir. He has a married sister Roxanne and a five year old niece Missa. That's short for Melissa"

"No fooling."

"who's in First Grade at Saint Catherine of Genoa in Wyoming. His favorite food is lamb and his favorite desert is strawberry shortcake, neither of which the Café has that is so unfair. He loves baseball and his favorite team is–"

"The Nationals."

"The Mets."

"The Mets?"

"He's very eclectic."

"So I gather." She looks at the clock and wonders if Tony could get so much in this much time. Well, Gibbs could, but Tony? "So, what was he doing staring through your scrubs?"

Sammy gives her an annoyed look. "He wasn't 'staring through my scrubs'. Or come to think of it, maybe he was. He _is_ a guy. But he was doing a sketch of me. He finished the fine detail work on my face over juices in the Café." She grasps the edge of the table and swings from it like an ecstatic bell. "He says I'm fantastic!"

"So, Miss Fantastic, let's see."

She stops swaying, unrolls the tube, holds up the work.

"Wow," is all Abby can whisper.

"Yeah!" Sammy's grinning so broadly Abby thinks that this time her cheekbones _will_ fracture. "_Wow_!"

"He got all this off of scrubs?"

"Artistic license."

"I'll say."

x

Supergirl looks out at them, hovering in a cloud flecked sky, cape fluttering in the breeze. It's the character's midriff and micro-skirt image, the one that showed the most super skin, but the effect is magnificence rather than eroticism. Nor is it just Sammy's head placed upon a template, the image from slightly windblown pixie length pale blonde hair to boot tips is perfectly integrated. Even the micro-skirt, which could have legally flashed the observer, is breezed but discreet.

It's very definitely Sammy, though "You know, that 'S' looks a little strained."

Sammy Sky is well endowed for her height; eight inches separate them and Abby's not slighted yet the two women can exchange bras. However, Abby's not entirely sure she could fill Supergirl's.

Sammy grins, probably with the memory of a pleasant exchange. "He said it was hard to be sure at thirty feet with the scrubs."

"Yeah, something was hard all right, but it wasn't his being sure."

The grin crashes. "Come on, Abby," her tone carries her hurt as she takes away and rolls up the paper, puts the rubber band back about it. "Be nice."

"I'm sorry. I was only teasing. I'm glad you found someone you're interested in." 'If that smile gets any broader I'll have to call Medical.' "You are interested, aren't you?"

"What a crazy question! I've never met anyone like him in my _life_." She sets down the tube, grasps the table edge again and uses it for securement as she sways like a bell. "'All I can say'," she sings, as Salvationist Sister Sarah Brown had in 'Guys and Dolls', "'is if I were a bell, I'd be riiiiingiiiing'."

"You're a ding-a-ling, all right."

"Am not," she says, continuing to sway, her rhythm emphasizing her words, "I'm deliriously, insanely, marvelously, _gloriously_ out of my mind in loooooove!"

x

Abby had known that from the instant she'd seen Sammy's eyes as her roommate had floated in. "Then can I ask one teensy, tiny little question?"

She stops her swaying. "Sure. What?"

Abby looks to the clock on the wall. She'd first come down slightly after fifteen hundred, now they're over a quarter of the way through Beta Shift. "Weren't you on a twenty minute break?"

She gapes at the clock and lets go, dashes wildly for the back door "_OH MY GOD_!" so quickly she's out before 'God' is. The door slams against the wall hard enough to damage one of them.

Unfortunately Tony DiNozzo is on his way in, rears backward and barely dodges the juggernaut. He catches the door as it bounces back at him and looks about inside to be sure the lab is safe before he steps inside.

"What was that all about?" he asks when he reaches the table.

"What was what all about?" Abby counters with superlative innocence.

"Nothing." He thinks that mutual self-combust prediction about the roommates is true and hopes this is one of the days he'd selected in the pool. But even if it isn't "Don't want to know." He picks up the rolled paper. "What's this?"

"Oh, that's another case. It's–"

The door behind them bangs against the wall as Sammy charges in, does a long slide to a stop on her pink ballet slippers, snatches the roll from his hand so quickly hers is a blur and runs so fast for the door her feet slip for three steps before the slippers catch and she dashes out, the door banging once again.

"I suppose you want to know what that was about."

Tony, staring at the door, decides "No. Absolutely not."

x

"McDarkroom scored getting off from the road because his trail led to Maryland." So what he does want to know as he takes his cell phone from his pocket and touches a button is "What can you do to enhance this?" On the small screen is the best of the security monitor images of his 'person of interest'.

"Plenty. This the guy?"

"No idea yet. We found almost a dozen people from Maryland to Virginia who paid cash for drones in Hobby Shops, but at this point all we have is that they have deep pockets. The famous Gibbs gut, on the other hand, says that with 60% of the hits being right here in DC, this is where he started.

She takes the phone, briefly manipulates the keys and then those on her computer to bring the image to her monitor.

A little work with gamma, then fine tuning the brightness and contrast results in an image that DiNozzo considers "Good enough for Facial Rec."

Another few moments of keyboard manipulation and the image slides to the left, while on the right side of the screen a rapidly changing series of faces, each measured with green vector lines, blur into one another. "I'll call you if I get anything."

"Call my Service. I'm off to bed."

She looks back to the wall clock, and realizes she's been checking it a lot lately. Okay, the team should have gone home at 1600 shift end but "It's only 1935."

"You should've heard what time Gibbs wants us to start in the morning."

Author's Note: In the episode 'Penalties', which was the third to involve Jimmy and Michelle's grown daughter, P.P.I. Susan Linda (Su Lin) Palmer, Dr. Samantha Marsters is NCIS' Deputy Chief Medical Examiner under CME Palmer, so I felt it was time to introduce Sammy to her future.


	12. Hello and Goodbye

Chapter Twelve  
Hello and Goodbye

Tim McGee, made late by his Maryland investigations so he drove directly to Silver Spring and therefore arrived home only thirty minutes later than he'd hoped, pushes his apartment door open in time to catch a glimpse of his wife at the end of the short passage rapidly walking from kitchen to the living room, portable phone to her ear.

"Do you have any _idea_ how that will _affect_ things?" she demands, her brogue sharper than any of Ducky's instruments.

He halts as she spins left so she doesn't see him, paces back to the kitchen, her tone sharper. "_Yes_, I'm happy for him!" She turns at the wall, stalks back, paces rapidly, her grip on the phone so tight that her hand is bright red cut through with white. "That's not the point." She turns at the far right wall of the living room / writing room and never does see him in the doorway as she stalks back. "The point is I can't spring this on him with a two week notice!"

She whirls back, her pace increasing until close to igniting the carpet. She's so angry she seems ready to chew it instead. He backs out and eases the door almost shut so he can see and hear her through the crack as she passes and repasses across the other side of the rooms.

Her speed increases with her ire and her heels thump on the floor. "This is too unexpected!" "Yes, I know the unexpected is unexpected. Do _not_ philosophize with me when you ask for something like this!" "Because he is a Federal Agent, not a 9 to 5 clock puncher. Half the days I never know what time he'll be home unless he calls first, like he did today that he'll be late, or from what country he may call _from_!" "Because his boss can and does say 'Grab this flight, you're going to Afghanistan or Pakistan or some other darn stan'."

"_No_, I work _two_ jobs. I'm Tuesdays at NCIS but every day I'm at Saint Mary's and I don't punch a clock either." She increases her pace to where he's tempted to look to the carpet for smoke.

"Father Donaldson. You _met_ him at the Wedding. It's four months ago, not like it's four years." "I've imposed on him so much already." "Because I'm the Curate and supposed to be _assisting_ _him_ and I spend a whole day a week at the Navy Yard when I'm not called in to deal with some emergency." "More often than you think when I have to Counsel several hundred people, some of whom meet me at Saint Mary." "He has been _very_ patient." "He can revoke my permission to work for NCIS." "Yes, he can! I'm the Curate, I work for him."

She halts, squeezes the phone in a strangle grip that sharpens the colors in her hand, then paces faster and harder than ever. Her brogue, so closely tied to her feelings that he can get a good read on her just by listening, is so sharp he has to pay careful attention. He's known for some time who she's talking to; from her side of the conversation it's obvious.

"Yes, I know this is a great opportunity." "Yes, I'm happy for him." "No." "That's not the _point_." "You know, you are forever doing this! Ever since we were kids you–" "I realize that." "Yes, I know." "Look, dinner's almost ready and I _already_ have something to ask him." "Yes, I made his favorite." "Yes, I'm making it to make what _I _have to ask him go smoother." "No, I do _not_ have to _buy_ his agreements." Her steps gets heavier, she grips the phone more tightly, her brogue sharp enough to draw blood at ten feet.

"That has nothing to do with being a Priest!" "Yes, I love him." "_Of course I love her_!" "You I am not too sure of at this moment." "All RIGHT! I will ASK him, but if he says 'no' then it's no, you get me?"

Tim, staring through the crack, sees her slam to a stop and her face go from red to purple. "I do _not_ _Buy_ his favors, especially with _that_!" she grates and he's offended on her behalf.

"All _right_," she grits the last of her patience. "I shall ask him. And I shall call you back tonight with his answer."

He so well knows that formality is her last layer. When she resorts to that and you press just one more inch, watch out.

"Don't mention it. Good_bye_."

She stabs the disconnect as though trying to make the phone need Ducky's services. She stands clenching the unit and her voice is tight. "Dia, a dheonú dom an neart chun seasamh in aghaidh le mo neart féin a choinneáil ó _tachtadh_ di chun báis!"

x

Tim eases the door closed and relocks it as quietly as he can. It takes a lot to make Shav angry but this isn't angry, this is furious. In all of her time at NCIS only he and Tony have ever managed true anger, and for those times it had taken cataclysmic events. Even the dénouement at the Hotel Maritz hadn't brought her to purple faced fury.

He'd understood her last appeal, a plea for strength to resist her own strength to keep from choking 'her' to death. Considering the person on the other end of the line, it was appropriate.

He decides his wife needs time, so he returns down the hall, takes the elevator to one, waits in the lobby for a measured four minutes and then rides back up, inserts his key in the door lock and comes home.

_ "Hon, I'm home_," he calls and she comes around the kitchen counter to him, pulls him into a hug.

"Oh, I am so happy to see you!" she exclaims with utter sincerity and kisses him enthusiastically. He would never guess she was any less than happy and content. She'd told the truth to her caller, she never has to buy favors from him. One kiss from his lovely wife and he's willing to shower unasked riches upon her.

"Me too, you. How was your day?"

"It started off great, then fell off a cliff but never mind that. Get undressed, dinner'll be ready in half an hour."

xxx

Donald Mallard, already in his civilian attire, pushes the long body tray containing Mister Mayfair into cooler 5, closes the door and turns to his assistants. Correction, associate and assistant. "Well," he says to Maura Isles, "by such ends a tale."

Maura has also changed, in her case into a red minidress appropriate in the scorching summer only if she wants to start fires, and red high heels inappropriate for running therefrom.

"Kind of wish I could stay to see this one through."

"As do I. It has been a long time since we have worked together, my dear."

"Well, if I have to go - and Jane is chomping at the bit to get me back - at least we got to work on an interesting one."

"I dare say it will be some time before we can top this one."

She grins. "Says you. A _Vampire_?"

"Well, yes, that was interesting. It reminds me of–"

"Ducky?"

"Yes?"

"Just kiss me goodbye."

x

It's a chaste kiss and embrace, but when they part Sammy wipes a faux tear from her eye. "That was beautiful."

"None of that, young lady," he says, his voice stony. "Before your next shift you are to purchase a wristwatch."

"I'm sorry," she says, vastly subdued. She'd taken off the instrument on the stairs but very wisely had not tried to give any explanation for her four hour vanishment, instead throwing herself upon the mercy of the dissection table.

"Oh, give her one time," Maura urges.

"Well... I admit it was only the one time - that I know of." He'd been gone for a month.

"It was," Maura assures him. "And you," she says, turning to the petite young woman, "you keep in touch," she emphasizes with a hug. "Let me know when you get that license."

As an MD, Sammy can assist in Autopsy, but like Jimmy she's a good two years from being Licensed as a Medical Examiner. "With Ducky's mentorship, it'll be pretty soon."

"Yes," he says, flattered, "well at least I have the assurance that, when I ultimately do retire, NCIS Autopsy will be in good hands with Doctor Palmer and Miss Sky."

"_HEY_!"

But his eyes twinkle before he returns his attention to their departing colleague. "I shall miss you."

"Maybe next time you'll come to assist in Boston."

"If you have an appropriate supply of clam chowder."

"I'll have them reserve an entire boat's yield if you'll come up."

"Most tempting."

"Oh, boy!" Sammy exults, "Jimmy and I in charge of Autopsy!"

"I shudder to think of the consequences to Agent Gibbs."

"Well," Maura says, "I'll leave you to work that out. I have a plane to catch." Flying out on a Tuesday evening is relatively easier,

"Goodbye."

"Bye."

x

After several more hugs the woman is gone. Sammy, looking after her at the closed elevator door, says "She was so sweet. I'll miss her," she turns to her mentor. "Not that I'm not thrilled to have you back."

"You may well not be."

"Huh? How can you say that? Of course I am." He'd already verbally raked her over flaming coals so the only thing she's sure of is that she's safe from another punishment.

"I looked through the log sheets earlier and noticed you haven't filled out your AS-211 or SKI-42 for today, plus yesterday's and today's L9-370s, not to mention that yesterday's U-193 is by no means complete."

"Yes, I meant to explain that. You see–" He reaches into his jacket pocket, holds out his pen to her. "Now?"

"Indeed."

She looks out to the elevator. "Is it really too late to get Maura back?"

"Just pray you finish them and all your other paperwork before I must look at the L-648s."

"Yes, sir." He heads for the steel and glass pneumatic doors to the elevator. "Where are you going?"

He turns back with a smile. "I am still on vacation. I shall see you in the morning."

"You're kidding," she says through frozen smile.

"Oh, and Special Agent Gibbs will be down," he considers, "sometime before 2100, for the report on Mr. Mayfair. Be sure to give him everything, including the C-314 and the M-47."

The smile hasn't moved, but its hard to speak through it. "You're not kidding."

"Good night, Doctor." All the doors close, the elevator whisks him away and Sammy looks about the silent ward and to the pen in her hand.

The life of an (acting) Assistant ME.

"Good night."

xxx

"A chuisle, dinner's ready," Siobhan McGee calls over the kitchen counter, but Tim doesn't look away from his computer's screen. The computer is on the workstation near the bedroom door and its the furthest the man has gone since she'd said to change his clothes from work. "Chothaímid?"

She can't see the screen from her angle but whatever is on it holds him rapt. She picks up a fork, stabs a piece of gravied meat from his bowl, comes out from the kitchen and crosses the room. Now she can see the images on the screen belong to a Hobbyist's page but he's giving it the attention another man might lavish upon a porn site. She reaches out and draws the meat across his lips.

Startled, he rears back and returns to the apartment. "What's _that_?"

"Irish stew."

"Your special recipe?" He licks his lips. "Tastes good."

She sticks the meat and fork into his mouth and leaves it there. "Well, if you want the rest of it, follow me."

"Anywhere," he slurs around the utensil and abandons the search.

x

When they're seated at the small kitchen table she asks "What's so enthralling?"

"Working on a case." He aims his fork at the bowl only to watch it move away in her hands.

"Timothy E. McGee, you do not do that."

Since he has no middle name she's long ago developed the method of filling in her points there. "All right, what's 'E'?"

"Evasive." She returns the bowl.

She's become his frequent sounding board, listens to his challenges and problems on the job and occasionally provides fresh insight. "If you can take it, I'll tell you. But it's not a dinner thing," he tells her definitely.

"So bad?"

"Too much death. Too much grief. No answers at all. We have a perp who hunts people the law declares 'Not Guilty' and kills them for it."

"And Hobby Shops are involved?"

"I don't know. All I'm sure of is that another victim was chosen today, and he - or she - will be murdered tomorrow. And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

His hope that the cash paying customer at the first hobby shop he'd been assigned to review the tapes of would point to their probable killer had been dashed. And when he'd left the shop and called ahead the third was closed, so unless their perp's a fourteen year old girl who may well be stopped at the courthouse steps...

"You're right, a chara. Later, when you're ready. Not now."

He doesn't want it to be ever. He'd rather hear about what was behind that fiery call.

x

They return to their meal but after a bite she says "_Speaking_ of picnics, what do you think of the Friday after this coming?"

He looks up and makes his face a masterpiece of confusion. That has to be the secondary concern, the one she'd planned on hitting him with tonight, but to him it's a segue powerful enough to cause whiplash. "Who was speaking of picnics?"

"We are, darling," she confirms with a loving smile.

"You mean we are now."

"Of course. So what do you think of next Friday?"

"I think I'll be very sorry to get into this," he lies. He likes picnics, and one with his wife is something to truly enjoy. "What picnic?"

The smile falls from her face and takes the forced high spirits with it. "Daor amháin." She takes a deep breath that doesn't seem to make her feel better. He supposes the call has derailed her original presentation, probably undoing both.

x

"The Palmers came to me this morning. They're having a very rough time." She won't mention the photos on James' cell phone unless she has to. He's not an invader of privacy; he would have selected the Crime Scene images on it solely by date and know nothing of any others. If she's wrong - well, she'll deal with that if she has to.

"Considering that yesterday she tried to slam him through a wall, you won't get any argument from me."

She pictures his various injuries this morning, all inflicted by his outraged wife.

"No one included it in their reports, however. The last thing their marriage needs is for her to be charged with 'Assaulting a Federal Employee'."

"No."

However, yesterday's drama coupled with today's conflagration only strengthens her resolve.

"Honey, I was thinking earlier, before I knew any of this, but this only tells me my idea was right. They go back in the Monday after next, the 30th, and have to jump in with both feet. I was thinking you and I and they might go out for a picnic, Friday the 27th. No stress, no NCIS, no nothing but a very enjoyable day of unwinding and whatever."

x

She watches him think it over. A whole planned day together; they don't get many that can be set aside when NCIS or her Priestly responsibilities for a parish of over 900 souls don't pull them in some unexpected directions.

"Fine with me. Ask them, I'll talk to Gibbs and you see Father Donaldson."

She won't tell him that, of that list, only Gibbs needs to give his approval. She'd called the Palmers late this afternoon after a long time of prayer and consideration and then called George to tell him that she'd scheduled a Counseling Session for next Friday but didn't mention with whom. It's the truth, considering the number of sessions they've already had and her certainty that there'll be a need for many more.

Slammed James into a wall, indeed.

They had never addressed those scratches on his arms, neck and chest, nor the bruises on his legs or his swollen face. From the context all had been obvious. She wonders for the Nth time how she's going to help this couple, and prays they'll make it all the way to the 27th intact.

That agreement James and Michelle made about their individual Counseling sessions, Dr. Gyves and the Anger Management Program, had started out as a bad one and sounds more problematic by the hour.

x

"Where do you have in mind?"

She quickly returns to the conversation and hopes her absence hadn't been noticed. "Remember last Advent, before the Christmas Pageant, that cave on the edge of Shenandoah?"

His look of anticipation crashes. "I remember." His tone is as flat as the rubble of his smile. The search for five year old Natalie Salamanca had pulled out Rescue personnel from half a dozen organizations, NCIS among them, plus an untold number of friends and volunteers. Every place a child could be expected to reach in several hours had been blanketed. Gibbs had reasoned that the child had gone to the cave which she'd been forbidden, over and over, to explore.

"We searched the four tunnels, we and your agents, but this time they're... well, this will be a pleasant afternoon." She reaches out, takes his hand. "And if after the picnic two couples want to find a little privacy..."

"Sounds good. I'll talk to Gibbs about next Friday. Who knows?" he asks, "we may even come out by Monday."

x

He watches her face fall and knows the other shoe is about to drop. "For someone who just scored a three or more day picnic, you're not very happy."

"I'm not," she admits, pushing some meat and vegetables about in the bowl with her fork.

"Why not?"

She tries to ask, tries a second time, clenches her fist and bites her knuckle and her face reflects too much distress.

He reaches out, takes her hand, kisses her indented knuckle. "Tell me."

She sighs and it sounds so much like defeat. "Before you got home Lenore called." He'd known it was her elder sister; that had been blisteringly obvious from the context. "Remember that in October we were going to look after little Bridget for a week, while she and Bill went on that Honeymoon they never had."

"Yeah," he says cautiously. He has never thought much of Shav's younger sister; he considers her thoughtless and manipulative; witness tonight's phone conversation. However, for the sake of peace he's never voiced this opinion. He knows he shares it with the younger sister, but also knows that the very best way to lose is to come between sisters, no matter how distant they are.

Bridget is six now and Shav had planned to use a Sabbatical in three months to look after the child. The mistaken impressions of that arrangement had caused a misapprehension Tony DiNozzo may never recover from - through the fault of no one but himself.

"So?"

He already knows Shav didn't want to ask this and decides to be merciful - for whatever reason it may be.

x

"Well, turns out Bill got a promotion on his job, senior something or other, but it requires them to move to Utah. They're going out to look at and open a house that comes with the job."

"Utah, huh?" He thinks he's got the gist of the overheard call and has worked out Shav's dilemma. "Pretty far away."

"Very far," she admits and he watches her spirit plummet.

"Won't be getting back to the East coast anytime soon, I guess."

"Guess not." Her tone has dropped from maudlin to bleak, not the direction he'd wanted it to go in.

He's surprised at her lack of pressing. "Then we probably won't look after little Bridget in October, will we?"

"No," she tells the stew bowl. "Not in October."

"Too bad."

"Yes," she says, sounding more forlorn than even a moment ago, probably feels whatever hopes she'd built up vanishing.

"Guess you'll miss them, seeing how the last time you saw them was the wedding." And she'd had a million things on her mind that day, probably hadn't spent more than an hour total with her sister and brother-in-law, none at all with their little niece, who'd been with a hired babysitter during the hotel Reception. March to July, four months; not a real lot of time far apart but if the prospect of extended (permanent?) separation is looming...

"Guess so," she admits, her mood down to crash and burn. Connecticut isn't next door, but it's not thousands of miles away. "Yes."

"When do they leave?"

"Saturday, the 4th."

"Two weeks." Now he understands why she'd been so upset with her sister. He gets up, ostensibly to go to the cupboard past her, then halts, turns back, sees her stare past his chair. "Shav, I have an idea. While they're getting a house in order, why don't _you_ look after little Bridget for a few days?"

She turns in her chair, her face gleaming. "You don't mind?"

"Why should I mind? We were going to do it anyway in October. The patter of little feet, a la that e-mail that got Tony into so much trouble. You can even introdu–" She's out of her chair and the rest is silenced by her lips.

It's true what she'd told her sister; she never does have to buy his agreements; but he does feel that they have a great lay-away plan.


	13. Doomed

Chapter Thirteen  
Doomed

At 2247, the end of a very long Tuesday, the extended sunlight having fled from DC two hours ago, Michelle Palmer shoves the door to the Kenilworth Safe Apartment out of her way, turns through it and shoves it with all her might. The explosion blasts through the small apartment and the echo out in the marble lined hallway slams back against the trembling wood.

She storms into the kitchenette, a line of refrigerator, stove and sink on the door side of the living room, the bedroom door being beyond the sink. She yanks the cupboard door hard enough to test the strength of the screws that secure it to the wall and pulls out a water glass with a half inch thick pebbled bottom.

She crosses to the open folding tray table in the room's center and slams the glass upon it. The flimsy table, which probably cost five dollars at some garage sale, jumps upward with the impact. One chair is close, she shoves it away and it falls with a bang to the wood floor near the wall adjoining the bedroom. She looks to the boxed 17oz bottle of Amoretto DiSaronno standing atop the refrigerator, a thank you gift to be given to Tim and Siobhan McGee for their kindness, generosity and faith. She'll buy them another.

She carries the box back and slams it down, the collapsible table bounces as does the glass. She grabs the offending glass before it can roll off and pounds it down again. Only the weakness of the table prevents the thick glass from shattering but the table top gave way under the impact. She sees she's made a deep dent, almost punched through it and won't care.

She yanks open the box, tears it to get to the square bottle, grips the rectangular top and twists as though trying to snap an enemy's neck. The pain in her fingers from the edges fires her. She upends the bottle, the amber liquid splashes until it overfills the glass and spills to the table. Only then does she pick up the wet glass in a vicious grip, pound the bottle down and gulp the potent mixture in a bare second.

She chokes up the liqueur, coughs violently, retches at the pain in her burning throat as it drives her to her hands and knees. Her side hits the table and as it collapses she hears some part of it break under the sharper crash of glass. She chokes so hard that she can barely keep from pitching to the floor.

Her streaming eyes cry the tears she hadn't wanted to weep and she tries to wheeze in air through her seared throat so she can continue choking, hardly able to feel the hands that grip her arms and lift her up to her knees.

x

"Easy, honey, we've got you," a woman's too familiar voice says from her left. The woman must have come from the bedroom, but she chokes too much to breathe or protest.

"You'll be okay," a nearly as familiar woman's voice on her right assures her. "We'll help you."

She's coughing so hard she can't see more through tearing eyes than a smudge of black on her left, a glow of white on her right. Another blur, larger and far more familiar, comes down from standing before her onto knees. "'Chelle, are you okay?"

She manages to force back the coughs, to breathe through seared throat - at least her sinuses are thoroughly cleared - but she can't answer. When she scrubs at her eyes the blurs turn into Jimmy before her, Abby Sciuto grips her left arm and Sammy Sky her right.

She tries to speak but chokes, would fall off her knees if not for the women holding her arms and Jimmy gripping her sides. His hands _would_ find the spot closest to her breasts.

Every time she tries to say anything the coughs consume her, but it's not as bad as it had been and each bout ends more quickly.

The violent fit passes but their expressions are so concerned, so solicitous, that she can force only one thing through in a broken whisper.

"_Shit_!"

x

They lift her to her feet, help her to step over the flattened table, balance her to the lumpy couch against the door side wall and ease her down. That Abby, Sammy and Jimmy call a concerned "Honey?" in shattered and unintended chorus does nothing for her mood.

In fact, seeing beyond Abby and Jimmy's bodies the broken table, the McGees' gift laying spilled on the floor, Amoretto puddled by the bottle and splashed all about where she'd coughed it up and the shattered glass shards that glint in the ceiling light makes the horrible evening all the worse.

"What are you doing here?" she asks the women, more a sustained sob, the pain in her throat gradually reduced to a sting. It's late on a horrendous second day here and while she doesn't know what Sammy's schedule is while she subs for Jimmy in Autopsy, Abby would have to be forced, kicking and screaming, from her lab before sunset - which granted is around 2100 in July. That it's 2300 and they should be on the other side of the city helps nothing.

"We came to surprise you," Abby says. "We figured you could use some fun in this-" she looks around the brown walled economy room, "quaint little..." Words fail. "We were hiding in the bedroom when you landed."

"Sur_priiiize_," Sammy sing-songs, very off key and with very forced smile. That Samantha Sky, the perpetually ecstatic imp always a second away from combusting from sheer manic delight has to force a smile is clear evidence of how worried she is.

"Sweetheart?" If anything, Jimmy's worry is greater than both their friends' combined.

"It's been a hell of a day," she admits, unable to find the English words to explain how bad it was. Chinese conveys the debacle, English doesn't have the flavor. "I've just been getting madder and madder all afternoon. I couldn't _take_ it anymore, couldn't hold it."

They'd seen Mother McGee this morning, slightly over twelve hours ago and had made, he'd thought, such wonderful progress. Then. "You went out at five for your Anger Management Session." 'Nearly six hours ago' remains unsaid, likely a very good thing.

She can barely get enough disgust into one sigh. "Really did wonders, didn't it?"

x

"'Chel–"

"Jimmy," Abby's right on his word, convinced after hearing it replayed in her mind that she was right to cut him off. It was exactly the wrong tone. "You know, why not take a walk, let us women talk?"

Unsaid to not make things worse is that he should pick up another 'Thank you' gift for their friends.

He reaches out to pet Michelle's bare arm. "I'll be back soon. I love you."

"I love you too."

It's not supposed to sound like a morbid admission.

x

When he's gone Abby kneels on one knee before Michelle, Sammy sits close on the two person couch, one arm over her shoulders in a half hug Michelle can't respond to. No one looks at the near empty bottle or large spill, the shattered table and glass. Things there can't get any worse, but she doesn't hold high hopes for the three of them.

Abby's words are soft, kind, loving and incisive. "You blew it off, didn't you?"

Michelle looks into her friend's green eyes, tip of tongue pressed to her pallet to give the short answer but she can't say it. She looks to Sammy's pale blue eyes and the word still won't come out. She looks at neither of them. "I didn't blow it off. Exactly. I went."

She meets Abby's eyes, then Sammy's, and finds nothing but love that she can't latch anger or frustration onto. "I did! I..." Her shoulders drop with her effort to carve the lie into something she could say. "Stood outside the building for three hours."

"And?"

"I couldn't do it," she answers Abby, frustration finding a gap to vent through. "I couldn't go in there again and spill my guts to a circle of strangers. They don't know what I have to do at NCIS. They don't know what an agent's life is, what I have to contend with, how it is. They can never understand."

Sammy shifts on the couch, comes even closer and pulls Michelle into a half hug. Michelle, suddenly uncomfortable with her bisexual friend's intimate closeness, starts to shy away but Sammy holds her in place, cups her hand under her jaw to keep her head steady on Abby, leans even closer until her lips tickle her ear and her warm breath is intense.

"_Bullshit_."

Offended, Michelle turns on her, as much surprised at the expletive from lips that never spoke worse than sugared honey. "_Sam-my_!"

The blonde doctor holds both palms to Michelle's cheeks, leans in again until their noses touch and whispers softly and lovingly "Bull... _Shit_."

x

"You've been to Sessions already, honey," Abby says as Sammy releases her, looking forward to getting off her knee from the hardwood floor. Before she'd stopped Michelle had been to several, so this was simply a matter of resuming. "You said they worked, that they would work."

"They won't." Sammy cups her chin, tries to turn her back but she slaps at her arm. "Will you stop that?"

"Stop giving me a reason."

"Listen, honey," Abby says and leans on the couch's armrest so she can get in close, "you started those Sessions because you wanted to save your marriage and your job, and to learn to control that temper of yours, something you tell me a Witch really needs to do. Have you changed your mind about that? About any of that?"

"No." Her tone is so morose both women are surprised.

"Then what's your plan?"

"My plan?"

Sammy says "We're way past the point of your deciding you're going to do this. We're at the point where you decide exactly how you're going to save your marriage, your job and your covenating."

This does get her to turn. "Covenating?"

"I don't know what a word would be, but I do know they're the three most important things to you."

"Not exactly," her arm about the blonde sprite's neck pulls her closer. However, she still has to admit "But they're pretty high up there."

x

"Listen," Abby directs as she continues to lean into her friend, "we came this evening because Jimmy wanted to have your friends here because you were down. Jimmy tells us that you and he and the McGees are going to Shenandoah to have an illicit micro-vacation next Friday as the official end of your vacation, but we want to help you. Jimmy said you were doing so well this afternoon since you two saw Siobhan, had high hopes. What screwed it?"

"Illicit micro-vacation?"

"Don't try to change the subject. You're going with the McGees into a cave with nine branches deep inside a mini-hill. No one just does that. You're not going spelunking, you're going bleunking."

Sammy says "I thought that was boinking."

"Doesn't rhyme. Listen, kid," she says, resnaring the Investigator's attention, "if you thought you were fooling anyone about walking deep into a cave miles from civilization I guarantee it was only you that you were. But if you don't get this," she waves her hand over the devastated room, "under control you're going to come out of the Underworld back into Hell. Now _Admit_ it."

x

The turn from the dismal prediction catches her off guard. "Admit what?"

"The thing you won't tell Jimmy, that you won't tell Gibbs, that you won't tell Chaplain McGee, that you won't tell your Anger Management groups, that you _will_ tell us if you have any hope to get away without us fused to you at the hips."

She manages to force a grin. "I have a Spell that'll do that."

"_Don't _make me slap you."

There's no longer even forced humor. She can actually feel her eyes harden and narrow as she grates "You wouldn't _dare_."

"Gibbs doesn't hit you, we three are the only ones who can say that, but if you don't level with us I swear to whoever that Goddess of yours is I'll haul off and give you one that'll keep your ears ringing until your birthday."

"I'M SCARED, OKAY?"

Abby hadn't believed the threat would be so effective and a glance to Sammy shows she's equally impressed. Michelle sits between them, her broken breath fast, eyes wet with tears.

"Scared of what?"

She wipes her eyes, forces the words through strangled throat. "Jimmy leaving me."

x

"He said he's leaving you?" Abby's shaken, can hardly believe the man she knows for so long, who loves Michelle so deeply, so thoroughly–

"He doesn't have to."

"Uh, honey?" Sammy pulls her attention. "He kind'a does."

She fights to contain the tears but loses the war. "I'm going to drive him away."

Both women are surprised because she'd said it through barely contained tears as though there could never be any possible doubt.

"You want to drive him away?" Sammy's not quite sure she should believe any of this. In the months they've been friends she's seen the love and devotion the Palmers have for each other, the plans for this evening are one aspect of that, and for it all to come tumbling down-

"NO," she cries, tears bursting through as her hands cling tight to Sammy's. "I _don't _want to! But it's going to happen!" she weeps. "I'm going to keep losing fights with my temper and I'm _trying_ to control it, I swear to the Goddess I am!" The tears stream down her face and she grows increasingly unintelligible so they must listen intently. Her grip about Sammy's hands turns them white as she weeps, all control shattered.

"But even though we've both opened up tremendously to each other about so much since we saw Mother McGee this morning, it's _going_ to happen!" She can barely sob the words out. "He's going to get fed up with me, totally lose all patience. _I _don't want to break up, _he_ doesn't want to break up but I can't _stop_ it unless I can get some control and I _can't_! I'm _trying_! It won't _Work_!" Her tears stream down her face and she can't stop them.

"The day is coming. He's _going_ to walk out on me. He's going to leave me and he'll Divorce me and I'm never going to see him _ever again_ and I'll kill myself because without him life isn't-"

The room jumps closer even before the loud sound and the pain in the back of her head register.

x

She turns back to the furious woman beside her. "_Abby_!"

"_Now you listen to me_. I don't know where this fatalism comes from but I want you to drop it right now! Jimmy _adores_ you! I don't know if he says it often enough to you but he should. He says it to us; he said only a half hour ago that he adores you. You two are wife and husband and that means forever. It means Love. And hope. And trust. And devotion. And faith. And intimacy. And affection. And honesty. And devotion–"

"You said devotion." She wipes the tears from her face.

"I like devotion. And kindness. And adoration. And belief. And understanding. And... And..."

x

"And we keep our promise." Sammy pulls her attention back.

"What promise?"

"At your wedding, when Mother Siobhan asked 'will you support this couple in their marriage', we all promised we would and I'm going to." She takes her hands, makes Michelle meet her eyes. "Because of anyone I've ever known to get married you two love each other more than anyone else I've ever seen. And since neither of you want out, you're not getting out. You're going to stay together for seventy years. You're going to raise ten children and fifty grandchildren and–"

"Oh, Goddess, now I _am_ doomed."


	14. Last Known with a Zombie

Chapter Fourteen  
Last Known with a Zombie

Gibbs stalks down the stairs from the MTAC platform and his conference with Director Shepherd in her fourth floor office and into the bullpen at 0800. It's Day Three, a scorching and humid Wednesday, the kind when you feel as though even in early morning you're about to drown while standing still on the steaming sidewalk. He thanks God again for air conditioning and sealed government building windows and Is very ready to receive reports. DiNozzo is fortunate to be able to call him to the plasma screen with a very pleased "You're gonna love this."

"What've you got?" he asks when he joins DiNozzo, David and McGee at the screen. There are 5 sets of feeds, two aligned above and three below. They're of the Courtroom viewers' galleries shot from above the judges.

"I must first give credit where it's due," DiNozzo says. "McCine got the Warrant and flagged it to Beta shift before we all hit the Field, so Agents Lamb and DuBois did the grunt work of sorting through the films. Using my image from the Hobby Shop, they quickly narrowed it down."

He'll thank them later. "What'd they get?"

"We have the Security footage from five Courtrooms where the victim/perps were Tried or had Hearings. Different Courts mean different Judges, different clerks, different everyones _except for..._"

In rapid succession the five cameras zoom in on a single face, the same in each. The shirts are different for each day but no attempt had been made to disguise the face, a ruddy complexion under a shock of very light blond hair.

He's not surprised it's "The guy from the McKnight Hobby Shop."

"Jawohl." The five images move into a smaller column configuration and give way to a formal Navy portrait and Service record. "Say 'hello' to _Ex_-Able Bodied Seaman Jimmy 'Little Man' Sullivan, so tagged by his shipmates because he's said to be five foot in elevator shoes, which moniker probably didn't go a long way in his making friends aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald Ford. According to the reports of SAA Jane Matheson he's five seven but they considered him a small man."

Ziva picks up the introduction when Tony pauses for a breath. "Dishonorably Discharged following Court Martial for dealing Drugs aboard the Ford. He used to get them from Puerto Rico. One batch someone messed up on the cutting and eight Sailors OD'd. Seven survived and turned him in, one did not make it."

Tim snatches the litany from her. "He got eight to ten in Leavenworth, did seven before being cut loose. He'd always insisted the deaths of his crew mates weren't his fault because that's how he'd gotten the smack. JAG, of course, disagreed."

x

"We have a call in to Matheson," Tony says, determined to take shorter breaths in the future. "She's now SAA aboard another Carrier, the George Washington. Must like planes. They're south of Sri Lanka so they're ten and a half hours ahead of us; it's 1830." He glances at the clock. "1840."

"Get a BOLO out. Your first priority is Court Officers. If seen, detain."

"Right."

He turns to his desk and Ziva takes the remote control from his hand, sets it to display the feed from her computer. "Sullivan did not learn his lesson in the clank-"

"Klink," Tony says as he reaches for his keyboard.

"Wherever. He was busted for manufacture of methamphetamines and did an additional four years in the Corrections Institute. Since his release he has dropped off the grid. No job. The Navy was certainly not going to help. Denied Unemployment Insurance benefits because they calculate the previous 18 calendar months wages of which he had none. Divorced by his wife in Illinois while in his fourth year in Leavenworth, lost custody of his seven month old son."

"Seven months?"

"I make no judgments."

"BOLO was already ready," Tony says. "I flagged it Urgent to all the Courthouses from Delaware to North Carolina."

"Good work."

"Because now," he concludes, "he's targeting perps who, for whatever reason, don't go to the _klink_."

"Works for me. How's he doing it?"

x

McGee takes the control from Ziva, resets it, and this time a montage of white and black devices appear, generally similar as four prop drones but individually different. "I'd previously identified five personal drones of sufficient size to carry a small spy camera and weapon such as Abby described together with the stability to maintain position after the weapon deploys - based upon a theoretical force of a .22 at discharge.

"Now that we know who and from where, I've identified the unit..." he enlarges one of the drones, a black one, "as a European manufactured 'Stratosphere 5000'." He sees Gibbs's expression. "They, err, come in different colors."

"Yeah, I get that, McGee. Tell me about this one."

"Well, as I said it features sufficient stability and other enhancements. According to the manufacturer it's top of the line, and uses a radio remote control system with a range of seven hundred meters."

"Meters, not feet. Seven hundred."

"Yes. So he can be anywhere within a 1.4 kilometer circle."

Bad enough five hundred feet or a thousand foot circle. "Can you narrow that?"

"Perhaps, but I may not need to. I have a powerful controller, more so than standard manufacturer specs. I have to adjust the frequency once I can get hold of the manufacturer. If I can get closer to it than he is, my controller will be dominant and I can take it over."

"Do it."

"I am tracking his Credit Card purchases," Ziva says, "back from the day he got out of the Corrections Institute, but there are extremely few."

"An hour."

"An hour. In the meantime we do have an address." He gives her an 'and you wait until now to mention that?' glare. "It is unreliable, several weeks since established in a Transient Hotel."

"You and DiNozzo."

xxx

Tony and Ziva drive to the last known address of Jimmy 'Little Man' Sullivan in Carver Langston. It's a recon trip at this point because, except for the extremely unlikely coincidence of Sullivan being in the Courtrooms where five out of five victims had had their cases and his purchase of a radio controlled drone - for cash so all they have there is a video - they have no true evidence against him.

Until they have something placing Sullivan near the Crime Scenes - seven hundred meters - or at least in possession of THE drone or its components, particularly preferable would be the explosive spikes, they can pick him up and question him but they have little provable with which to Charge him.

If he is not at the 'last known', and Tony has his doubts, they have no focus for a Search Warrant.

The Agents are confident, however. A perp who sets a personal pace of an assassination a day will quickly provide a plethora of clues. The issue is finding them.

x

Jimmy Sullivan's last known is one of many formerly respectable hotels in the District's less reputable areas that rent by the day for singles or by the hour for couples; buildings that fell on hard times in the 80's and kept on going. In such places elevators set stationary records that the 'Big Bang Theory' will never challenge and fire fighting facilities are often a half gallon moldy bucket in a barely lit stairwell which few are brave enough to traverse after sundown.

Tony regrets leaving the car when the furnace blast hits him and looks at the front of this building where the cleanest window had been scraped four years ago. He has high hopes for the morning clouds that darken the street below twilight; the NWS calls for thunderstorms for the next three days and they may make a difference in the grime. He turns to Ziva. "I'll toss you to see who takes this one."

"I do not want to have to explain your broken leg to Gibbs."

He's not sure if she misunderstood the offer or not; he only admits to himself that he lost.

He heads for the front door, which blue color the paint company probably stopped making before Vietnam, and hopes he won't pull it from its hinges as George Reeves was wont to do.

x

The lobby, and that term is unnecessarily generous, has less to recommend it than does the outside. The air could stun a moose and he looks for something to prop the door open, but he finds nothing he wants to touch. Then again, the day before yesterday they'd endured the Palmers' five day old, ninety degree dead-and-decaying Crime Scene and this is only marginally worse.

Ziva lowers her voice so only her partner can hear her recollection. "Ten years ago while in Germany I visited a preserved Concentration Camp near Berlin, Sachsenhausen. Since then I had not thought I would see a worse place to live."

"And this is the height of the tourist season."

Ziva considers the worst aspect of Tony's observation to be that, in mid-July, he is probably right. "Let us get this over with before I must touch something."

x

Approaching what used to be a reception counter is like stepping into a 'Tales from the Dark Side' set, except not only is it not as brightly lit, that being due to the crusty windows and the single desk lamp Sam Spade threw away, but it gives a bad impression of such Film Noir.

"Excuse me," Tony says to the corpse of what might be the clerk who came with the place. He'd heard of people who looked like their pets but he'd never thought it applied to buildings. "_Excuse_ _me_."

The cadaver swivels his head. He looks for long enough for Tony to wonder if pall bearers are needed. Finally the not completely decayed zombie creaks up to his feet and shambles over, the clothes which are older than both agents together hanging from him, a mass of cloth a corn yard scarecrow would refuse to wear. He plops his arms and upper body onto the counter. "Waddayawan?"

Tony takes a half step back, waves his hand quickly. "Nose plugs would be nice." He hadn't thought the stench of the lobby could be made worse. He pulls out his shield and ID, anxious to get the visit over with. "Special Agent DiNozzo; NCIS."

"Cops never brought 'em in before. Usually they get take-out. Room's twenty an hour." He inspects Ziva's chest, gives her a stained smile before deciding "Ten if she can do double duty."

x

Tony is amazed when five seconds go by without anything from Ziva, and decides she has no retort that she thinks would get through the man's skull to warn him that what passes for his life is in imminent peril.

Instead, probably deciding she truly doesn't want to touch anything here, she pulls out a photograph, one of the Courtroom Security shots. "We are looking for this man."

He looks at the picture, does another evaluation of her chest, then leans over the counter to get a view low behind her. "Triple duty, huh?" He meets her eyes for the first time. "I like a bitch can take three on one." He gives his eyes another elevator ride, then looks at her face, focuses on her lips. "Then again, three holes, three guys; probably only need half an hour."

"Oh, boy." Tony turns away, starts a mental count.

x

He doesn't reach three when there's a loud thump and when he turns back mister three-on-a-match is coming up from the counter, red nose darkening his shirt. Tony's impressed it can find an unmarked spot.

"Let us try this again," she says in tones that have made braver - or at least more intelligent - men give ground. "This man!" She holds the picture where no blood will get on it. "Have you seen him?"

"Eeain'ere," the zombie mumbles under his hands which do little to staunch the flow.

"When did you see him last?"

"Eyedonno."

"_Try_ knowing."

"Lasweek. Dinpayrent. Donnonuttinelse. Now getow."

x

Deciding they've gotten the most useful information they're going to get, they elect to leave the stink. But halfway across the lobby "_Twat_ cun."

Ziva slams to a stop but Tony tells her sotto voce "Gibbs doesn't like it when you execute witnesses."

She looks at her hands, wipes her right one on her left sleeve. "Sadly, I would have to touch him again," she says, not lowering her own voice.

At least, when they step out, the downpour has started, impressively heavy for the leading edge. They don't hurry to their car but hope the storm will wash the stink from their clothes.

xxx

"Carver was a bust," Tony announces when he and Ziva enter the bullpen. He continues his report while rooting in his desk drawers for his umbrella. By the NWS forecast, he'll need it for at least three days. "Sullivan skipped out on his rent last week. I figure he used the cash for the drone."

For an instant, while in the elevator from the underground garage, he'd considered mentioning to Gibbs that the only thing found interesting in that fact finding mission was Ziva's bust, but he'd decided he likes his testicles in their present convenient location.

He's certain he'd be safe from immediate reprisal, but the woman still has a penchant for impromptu conferences in the men's room, so he decides discretion is the better part of bodily integrity.

"Takes money to outfit a drone as an IED launcher," McGee says an instant before his phone rings.

"I'm thinking zip gun technology," Tony counters.

"It would not require much more," Ziva agrees. "A fixed aim weapon, align on target with the camera and fire."

"We came up with all that while you two were gone," Gibbs tells them, not pleased the pair failed to return with more.

"Well, what can I say, boss? Great minds think alike."

x

Gibbs is about to give a retort along the lines of 'Then how did you get it?' when "Boss," Tim says, putting down his phone, "MTAC has Special Agent Afloat Matheson aboard the Carrier George Washington on SatCom from the Indian Ocean."

"You and DiNozzo," which order he sees pleases the man not at all.

"I at least have time to hit the Head?"

"At $800 a minute, it'll be the most expensive pee of your life."

"I can hold it."

"Good call."

xx

They stand before the huge screen upon which appears the colorful Seal of the George Washington. "Don't know why Gibbs is so-"

"He's racing a deadline," Tim cuts in. "At the pace Sullivan set, someone else blows up today."

"I know that. It's not like I can't be thirty seconds late."

"Why didn't you use the facilities at the hotel?"

Tony is about to answer when the sigil vanishes to be replaced by a woman with brown hair gathered back into a pony tail which they saw before she turned to face the screen. He sees those brown eyes and forgets about everything but the woman.

"Well, well, well, Special Agent Jane Melankovic. _Very_ long time no see." Kate's time, in fact.

"Hello, Agent DiNozzo. Hi, Timothy."

"So this is where you've been keeping yourself since that nut job Priest wanted a Good Wife. Talk about 'ring around the collar'. No offense, McGee."

"None taken. I found a Priest and a Better Wife all in one."

"Yeah, I heard you got hitched to your Division Chaplain. Congrats."

"Thanks."

"Someone to keep him on the straight and narrow."

"Tony."

"Anywho, we were expecting Special Agent Matheson."

"You got 'er."

"Wait," Tim says. "You got hitched? Congrats back." But then he realizes that since she was Matheson aboard the Gerald Ford that had to have been a while ago.

"Thank you."

"Timmy married the High School sweetheart. What's your tale?"

"Close. My College Professor. After the fact, of course. No 'teacher's pet' jokes for me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Tony assures her, hoping she'll buy that he hadn't had it on the tip of his tongue. "So you're back Afloat, huh?" Two ships on one stint had been more than too much for him.

"What can I say? Maybe it's the air, maybe being at sea, but I find sea life very much agrees with me. If I spend too much time on land things get hairy."

"Doesn't leave much time for a married life, does it?"

"We catch up," she says with a smile that conveys the effort is well worth it.

"How's your husband?" Tim cuts in before Tony can pick up and run with that ball.

"Ian's staid. Tweed jacket with elbow patches when we were in England, then we moved to California where he switched to suits. He got a job with an Indi TV company, hosting a show kind of like Leonard Nimoy's 'In Search Of.' Station Manager's a Rat, but what can you do?"

"See each other enough?" Tony asks, likely trying to regain the broken thread. Tim hopes he won't be able to. But hers must be a lonely life. Being an SAA leaves precious little room for social lives, more so if you repeat. The tours last up to a year before the agent is rotated off, one of the primary reasons he's glad to be back from the Seahawk.

"Not for most of this year, but we'll catch up when I get home in two months. And he's still staid, but he lets me out once a month to howl."

x

The bald technician to their right, Tony thinks he was at one time an Air Force General in some Area 51ish operation, is outside the camera's view giving taps on his left wrist and he remembers the bill for this satellite call. "Reason we called is about Ex-Seaman Jimmy Sullivan, a.k.a. 'Little Man'. He was yours aboard the Gerald Ford."

"Been a lot of years but I couldn't forget him. I have tried."

"Anything that's not on the records that'd help give us a handle on this guy?"

"One thing that does stand out in my mind is that he was a 'privileged' person, by which I mean 'people owed him' for everything."

"That can be a problem for those who don't pay."

"The worst thing about him, the absolute worst, was that he wasn't stupid. He could've done the job, but he took the easy way out and one of the things that people owed him was to do his work. Some guys will put up with a lot, they'll even put up with someone with an ego the size of that ship, but everyone has his job, and for many it's back breaking work, so no one likes a goldbricker."

"Didn't play well with others?"

"He might have except they'd have to be just like him and no one was. Men and women pulled their weight, and those who didn't usually got clunked with gold bricks.

"But he was smart, as I said. Had an aptitude for building things. If he hadn't started dealing, he had the ability to make something of himself, just not the will. It would have interfered with what he was owed if he did do things for himself."

"But he got into dealing," Tim says, mind on the clock.

x

"It was part of people owing him. They owed him for the drugs, and that came in both money and service."

"Service is more valuable," Tony says, remembering his own days as the sole law in town.

"Darn right. When there's not much to buy when you can be out for months with only a few days when you reach a safe port, cash isn't as valuable as having people who owe you favors."

"And recreationals can slip behind the wall," Tony observes. That too is familiar.

"It might have, but a bad batch got out and a Sailor died. Suddenly the promises he had weren't worth scrip. Everyone turned on him. He practically ran to my old office seconds ahead of a lynch mob."

"Dishonorable Discharge," Tony sums up, "time behind bars, no employer wants him, wife who hadn't seen him in four years divorces him and takes his seven month old 'son'..."

x

"The things you have to keep in mind about Sullivan," Matheson says, very likely having her own off-camera time keeper, "are small-souled, but with aptitude that he could make work for him if he weren't more interested in making others pay off their 'debt', and that's a debt that never ends."

"Building things include new kinds of weapons, like a missile launcher on a recreational drone?" Tony asks.

"It could."

"We think he's hitting people who don't go to jail for their crimes," Tim says.

"He paid, how dare they not?"

"But while we have Metro Police and FBI backing us up," Tony says, "he's hitting within a pretty big circle in two states plus DC, and cases get dismissed or perps see no jail time every day. We may not like Lawyers, but they do their jobs."

"Then the only way to make people safe from him," she concludes, "is to follow what Shakespeare said: 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers'."

"It would make Gibbs' Rule 13 a lot easier," Tony predicts.

"Really piss Michelle off, though."

"Riiiight," Tony's smile is something Tim wants to hit.

"Is there anything else you can think of?" he asks, hoping to get a lot more before someone pulls the plug.

"That's about it. Good seeing you again Timothy, DiNozzo. Give my best to everyone."

"You too, Jane," Tim says.

"Say 'Hi' to Ian and the Rat."

The image vanishes on her laugh.


	15. Storm Front

Chapter Fifteen  
Storm Front

As DiNozzo and McGee descend the stairs from MTAC, they see in the huge window before them that the torrential storm blackens the sky and silently pelts the soundproofed glass into thick rivulets.

"Matheson describes Sullivan as good at building things," Tony announces as they return to the bullpen. "By the way, you will never guess who Special Agent Afloat Matheson is."

Gibbs doesn't glance up from what he's writing. "Special Agent Jane Melankovic. We met her on the Figgus-Swain-Evans case in Jacksonville."

"Well, of course when I say never, boss, I really mean-"

"What else did you find out while you weren't reminiscing about priests and wives? By the way, McGee, your wife called."

"Err, thanks." She hadn't called his cell, and an early morning contact like that means important but not urgent. He'll call when he has a Gibbs-free moment. Right now he's interested in the email on his screen.

"She says 'everything's set' and wants to know if everything's set."

"Thank you."

"Cryptic," Tony mutters from his desk an instant before his phone rings. "Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo."

"What've you got?" Gibbs asks McGee. "Talk and type."

"Sullivan could build a delivery system for the spear or whatever he's using–"

"A three ounce charge of C4," Abby announces as she enters the bullpen from the rear staircase and stops before Gibbs' desk. "In studying the configuration of the victims' craters, I'm convinced there would be three parts to the weapon. The spike bores the hole into the victim, the C4 wrapped around the body of the spike under the enlarged head is the deadly payload and the detonator is in the rear. The head prevents the Four from being torn off as it enters. It buries itself into the body and _kablooie_."

x

DiNozzo slaps his phone down to pull their attentions, a triumphant grin etched upon his lips. "Sullivan took his body out and went kablooie. That was Court Officer Justin Wilson at Kentucky Court. He remembers seeing Sullivan yesterday because he stayed the whole day in Part Seven, Fast Track. All the others Hearing yesterday were longer trials I guess he didn't want to sit through - and he never went up for a case."

"Anyone get off?"

"Glad you mentioned that, because one guy got off a 'Menacing' charge yesterday afternoon because his live-in girlfriend, the Vic, changed her mind and withdrew the charge. She made an impassioned plea to the judge before she realized dropping the charges was all it took. Thing is Sullivan left two seconds after the family took him away."

"Name and Address."

"Being checked. It was yesterday's docket."

"Call him back. Make sure he's getting it now. McGee, you get that jamming thingy ready?"

He taps his monitor. "Details are in. I can program my system on the way." A bright flash fills the room through the large North window as a bolt bull's-eyes the top of the Washington Monument.

"Bring your slickers."

xxx

It takes over twenty minutes for Court Officer Wilson to provide DiNozzo with the name and address, north of the National Arboretum, of Ilya Wilkanowski, the man whose dropped case so interested Jimmy Sullivan. However, since Court cases are heard locally, Gibbs' Hemi has already warped normal space and turned traffic regulations into suggestions by the time specifics come in.

The rest of his team, cringing at every multi-billion watt lightning blast as the Hemi remains just a prayer short of hydroplaning, wonders if anything short of a major hurricane can force Gibbs to approach the posted speeds.

The details on Wilkanowski are also forwarded to Tobias Fornell because Arboretum is too large a territory and Sullivan, to commit this murder, need be no closer than 700 meters in any direction of his victim, who can be surveilled from the sky and targeted by a weapon that can drop down and fire before a danger is perceived.

Escape is equally easy.

x

DiNozzo, riding shotgun, clings to the strap beside the door and is grateful for the yellow and black Hemi's traction on the wet road, for the heavy storm seems determined to evolve into a vertical river.

"McGee," Gibbs calls back as they splash through a pothole that also seems determined to evolve, this one into a pond. "Can this thing even fly in this stuff?"

"No significant wind other than purely local gusts, which is also why the Weather Service is saying we're to expect three days of this. The manufacturer says it can fly in bad weather and I have to expect that while Sullivan was modifying the thing he also upgraded the stabilizers. In fact, he'd have to have since he attached some kind of remote controlled zip gun."

Tony looks back to see that McGee is working on the innards of a joy stick control device.

"That looks like the thing you used to take over Powell's jet pack."

"It _is_ the same device, Tony, which is why I'd appreciate your not trying to pull it out of my hands this time, at least until I can figure out what fires the IEDs."

"One time was enough," he assures his partner. It was one thing if he'd dropped a murdering perp out of the sky, quite another if he accidentally fires the weapon and it hits one of the team or an innocent bystander.

This weapon doesn't wound. It only kills.

xx

They close on Ilya Wilkanowski's home, grateful Tony has made no allusions to Kuryakin. The house's flowing lawn surrounds the wooden structure on all sides and Gibbs hates it the moment he sees it. The front door is over a foot high brick patio and the eaves extend outward in all directions to protect the house from the rain, while the gutter in front guides the runoff to a drainpipe on the house's corner. He's sure the back of the house is similarly appointed. The too many protected windows they can see on side and front of the house as Gibbs parks the Hemi are all wide open.

"You ready, McGee?" Gibbs asks as he looks to the house across the street, a protective tactician's nightmare.

"Yes, boss, but I think I should stay here."

"Afraid you'll melt, McWimpy?"

"No, Tony, but there's more than keeping this thing dry. Out here I'll have a view of the drone as it approaches and a few extra seconds to synchronize the frequency as it drops down."

Gibbs sees the logic in this plan and still hates it. The falling river limits visibility over the house to crap. "And suppose it comes around the back?"

"I'm expecting it'll circle the house looking for Wilkanowski."

"We're wasting time," is Gibbs' reply as he opens his door and DiNozzo and David get out and make their way to the house. Jackets and caps must sub for umbrellas that can't be raised as they'll block views and the same applies to caps which must be pushed upward. Even a few degrees of obstruction can be critical.

Tim scans the sky, such as he can see in the torrential rain, and hopes his too many guesses and suppositions about this situation hold up, for if he's wrong about any of them a man could die.

x

The agents, clad in their waterproof black jackets and their equally distinctive caps, the temperature having dropped from its earlier scorching level, are grateful for the extra long eaves they'd cursed moments before, for they can stay out of the rain that threatens to overflow the long gutters over their heads. The torrent runs out of the pipe on the house's corner and down a gully beside the driveway to the street already establishing its ambition to become a river bed. Its hope, according to the NWS, may well be fulfilled during these next three days.

Gibbs' knock is answered by a woman in a sleeveless blue blouse and matching knee length skirt. Her eyes brighten with suspicion at the sight of three official visitors crowded on the patio by her door. "Yes?" she asks but her tone says 'what do you want?'

Gibbs conducts the introductions, concluding with "Is Ilya Wilkanowski here?"

"Why?"

"We're here to stop someone from killing him."

x

It's frequently impressive how such an announcement buys entry into virtually anywhere. The living room where the woman greets them is early rustic, not quite in keeping with the neighborhood but it's a seamless fashion, and there Manya Krasner introduces them to Ilya Wilkanowski, a tall man easily ten years her senior. "What's this all about?"

"Before we get into that, let us close all your windows."

"Let you?"

"You two need to stay away from the windows."

Were Gibbs in the mood, he'd create a rule about getting an agreement by asking for something quite odd in utter seriousness.

Krasner turns toward the back of the house. "Paul, close your window."

"No, we'll do that."

"Awwww, Mommmmm, it's haaaaat!"

"_Now_."

"Oh awl-RITE!"

During this exchange DiNozzo and David had taken the house by half and quickly closed each window, closed drapes or lowered shades as available.

Gibbs takes a step toward the back room but his path is blocked by both Krasner and Wilkanowski.

"What's going on?" Wilkanowski demands, clearly not going to allow Gibbs into the child's room.

"Someone is using a drone to kill people who have managed to avoid guilty verdicts in their court-"

"MMAAAAAAMEEEEEEEEEE!"

x

The strident yell turns both adults toward the back door but though they would run to aid the child Gibbs passes between them and shoves backward, propels himself to the door while he slows the others. He opens the door left handed, Sig in his right as his agents get into position to block their hosts.

When he's through he sees, hovering at the window, a large white machine held aloft by four propellers, a camera and a weapon aimed at the door. "GET DOWN!"

His shout echoes in the small room but in the moment it takes the boy to hesitate and a shriek from behind him to nearly drown him out the drone rises straight up out of target angle.

He runs past the confusion in the living room and yanks the front door open. "McGEE! BACK!" he yells while pointing up.

x

The agent in the Hemi's back seat across the street looks above the house and works quickly at the control box in his hands. Gibbs leaps off the patio, dashes through the mud and torrential rain to the corner. Before he rounds it he hears the door bang open behind him and catches a glimpse of Ziva running out.

He reaches the back of the house and looks up, taking advantage of the wide eaves and the calm air as Ziva appears at the opposite corner and aims her Sig upward. The white drone is over thirty feet above the next property to his right and he'd aim as well except the drone banks and weaves, twists, pitches and yaws as it follows the conflicting commands of two controllers.

Years of Marine training have him turn and run for the front of the house, splash across the yard and he's halfway across the street when he hears an impressive crash behind him and the distinctive sound of shattering equipment.

x

He yanks the car door open and jumps into the seat even before McGee puts down the useless controller. "_Could you trace him_?" comes at the same moment as a red Chevy rips out of a space a hundred feet down and across the one way street and charges toward them.

"I don't think we have to," McGee says as the car rockets past in a wave that splashes their side and Gibbs already has the Hemi pulling out in a tight turn that raises its own cloud of water.

Even before the Chevy can get traction and speed up Gibbs has fought the yellow and black car into a tight turn and presses the accelerator hard enough to create a cloud of water vapor behind them.

x

McGee clamps his belt about his waist, thinks of Siobhan and tries to remember every prayer he's ever learned as the tires catch and the speedboat skims the mini waves in pursuit, engine roaring like a too often frustrated lion that this time will not be denied its prey.

There's no traffic on R NE - yet - but their prey takes it at reckless speed. The only differences between them is that Sullivan's charge is suicidal but Gibbs' is avenging.

The rain drives so hard that the wipers, set on maximum, cannot keep the glass clear for long enough to make a difference. Their flashes of clear views of the road and their rocketing prey alternate with distorted images that waver on the shield. It's during one of these wavering images that the inevitable happens.

From the right a truck comes through the intersection, Sullivan tries to shift left around it and his tires loose traction. He spins, misses the truck but turns sideways, hydroplanes into a tree on the edge of the National Arboretum, hits it broadside in a loud, fragmenting crash.

Gibbs, easing the speedboat into a controlled stop, goes around the back of the truck and halts beside the car. When they get out, the agents see that Sullivan, bleeding head resting against his web cracked side window, will not answer questions or do much else for quite some time.

xxx

"I am not sure which is in worse condition," Ziva says from behind her desk three hours later, "Sullivan or his device."

"That's a tossup," Tony admits. "It shattered, he got a concussion and a broken rib from the arm rest plus a few more sundry bruises; I think they came out about even. What did Abby say about that thing?" Ziva had delivered the various fragments that overflowed a large bucket to the Forensics lab.

"Quite a bit," she says, looking to the dark window still being pelted into whimpering submission by the torrent. "I expect you shall hear much of it in the morning."

It looks like night outside, but a night broken by bright staccato flashes and the occasional northward bolt, but it's only 1400 and Gibbs, in a rare magnanimous moment, has authorized early departures to make up for the long series of late nights. Their suspect will not be fit for questioning until tomorrow, so they can come in early.

The fact that the advancing 'night' in the windows is the fault of the stalled storm is something that he says didn't enter into his generous decision.

"Speaking of morning," Gibbs says, "you take care of the Cleaners?"

"They're there now," McGee assures him. "It'll be ready by tonight and the Palmers can move back in the morning. They promise Michelle won't be able to find a single drop of blood."

"So the Gremlin won't have to move after all."

"No, Tony. One thing in life can be copasetic." He remembers he still has to ask about that day off to go caving with Shav and the Palmers but that can wait. Case over, suspect in the hospital where he can't be interviewed, he doesn't want anything to interfere with the possibility that Gibbs will say

"Then everyone go home."

x

They're not slow in taking advantage. Tony, as he grabs his umbrella, looks to the rain beating the window to a pulp and turns to Ziva who's coming around her desk. "Ready for a swim?"

"You have told us that you are in a committed relationship with Jeanne Benoit," she says as she exits the bullpen.

Halted by this unexpected reprimand, he can only recover well enough to ask as she reaches the elevator: "What does that have to do with anything?"

She presses the button and calls back: "If you are going to be faithful to her, you should not be seeking opportunities to get me wet."

She's inside the car and gone before he can pull up his face.

.

.

Next Episode; (A Crossover): On the High Seas. The Agents take a round trip Cruise from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta in hopes of a week of rest and recreation. After all, what could possibly go wrong on the Love Boat?


End file.
